As an occupational therapist with 25 years clinical experience Deidre has an indepth understanding of the public health system and the value and importance of clinical research that informs practical patient care. Her clinical and research focus is in palliative care and she has a particular interest in ways to optimise function at the end-of-life. Her PhD, completed in 2012, focused on the embodied experience of functional decline at the end-of-life and patient priorities at this time. It also examined multidisciplinary clinician perspectives about rehabilitation at the end-of-life. In 2013 Deidre moved to Adelaide to take up a research fellow position and project managed the palliative care arm of the 2.5 million dollar NBN telehealth project, funded by the Department of Health. Following this, she held a balanced position in the Occupational Therapy program for 3 years until her move to Palliative and Supportive Services in May 2017. Deidre topic coordinates the post graduate palliative care research topics and clinical management topics. Her current research focuses on allied health interventions to optimise function for people with advanced disease and ways to measure meaningful clinical gains in this area. Deidre is an inuagural member of the Flinders University Research Centre in Palliative Care and Death and Dying. She is also a amember of an international occupational therapy palliative care research collaborative which seeks to devleop an international reserach agenda to evaluate the effectiveness of pallaitive care OT interventions.