Professor Jennifer Tieman

Matthew Flinders Professor and Director, Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying

College of Nursing and Health Sciences

place Health Sciences
GPO Box 2100, ADELAIDE, SA, 5001

Professor Jennifer Tieman is a Matthew Flinders Professor and Director of the Research Centre in Palliative Care, Death and Dying. She was the inaugural Dean (Research) of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Professor Tieman leads a series of nationallly and internationally recognised palliative care programs which aim to build awareness and capability across the Australian health and aged care systems. She has a particular interest in the role of digital knowledge and in how online information can support patient, carers and families across ageing, caring, dying and grieving.

As Director and Chief Investigator of the CareSearch project, she leads a national palliative care resource supporting health professionals in all settings of care and patients, their families, carers and friends. The project team undertakes research on knowledge retrieval and knowledge dissemination and investigates translation approaches that encourage the use of evidence in health, particularly in palliative care and end of life care. Her work led to the establishment of a specialist bibliometric research group, Flinders Filters.

Professor Tieman has an active engagement in aged care. She leads palliAGED an evidence and practice platform for aged care offering palliative care and end of life care resources for the workforce and for services. palliAGED is part of  CareSearch's program of work connecting care across the aged and health care sectors and the community.  She is Co-Lead of the End of Life Directions of Aged Care (ELDAC) program which offers a Knowledge Hub, toolkits, digital resources, and a national Linkages program for aged care.  Between 2022 and 2024 she was the the Director of the Knowledge and Implementation Hub of ARIIA.

Professor Tieman is involved in other national and state research and projects supporting ageing and care at the end of life including:

  • Advance: Focus on general practice and aged aged around ACP, palliative care and dementia
  • CarerHelp: Support for unpaid carers caring for someone at the end of life
  • Palliative Care Connect: Resources for South Australians needing paliative care
Qualifications
  • PhD, Flinders University
    Investigating barriers to accessing online palliative care
    Awarded 2011
  • MBA, University of South Australia
  • BSc(Hons), Mebourne University
  • Foundational Fellow, Australian Institute of Digital Health (FAIDH)
Honours, awards and grants

The Dying2Learn MOOC won the Innovation in Palliative Care award at the 2017 Palliative Care Australia conference. She was a finalist in the 2024 Innovation in Palliative Care Awards. 

Key responsibilities

Director, Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying

As Lead or Co-Lead of national research programs (CareSearch, palliAGED, ELDAC), she is responsible for

  • Design, delivery and evaluation of national palliative care and aged care resources
  • Development of strategic research resources and innovations to support quality end of life care
  • Management of grant funded research and research teams
Teaching interests

Working with national colleagues, Professor Tieman led the design and conduct of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on death and dying. Over 6,000 people enrolled for this course.

The Dying2Learn MOOC won the Innovation in Palliative Care award at the 2017 Palliative Care Australia conference.

Rawlings D, Miller-Lewis L, Collien D, Tieman J, Parker D & Sanderson C 2017 Lessons Learned from the Dying2Learn MOOC: Pedagogy, Platforms and Partnerships Educ. Sci. 2017, 7, 67; doi:10.3390/educsci7030067

As part of palliAGED, team has developed a set of ten introduction modules for aged care nurses providing a gateway to training and understanding in palliative care symptoms and care issues. There have been over 60,000 module completions.

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Media expertise
  • Ageing
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  • Palliative care
Further information

Our Research Centre in Palliative Care Death and Dying explores the universal experience of death and dying and champions the contribution of palliative care to the person, the health professional and the health system

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