Slavica Kochovska

Dr Slavica Kochovska is a Research Fellow in Palliative Care with the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University. She is also an Honorary Senior Fellow with the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong and an Adjunct Research Fellow with IMPACCT, University of Technology Sydney.

Combining applied health research with an academic background in linguistics, Dr Kochovska leads a program of work that focuses on delineating the impacts of chronic breathlessness for people with life-limiting illnesses and their families and on developing models of care to minimise those impacts through improved recognition, assessment and response in clinical practice. She is currently conducting health services research that aims to improve the outcomes of clinical consultations for people with chronic breathlessness and their carers using co-designed, person-centred approaches to symptom assessment.

Dr Kochovska has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and has been awarded over AUD$3.5M in research funding as a Chief and Associate Investigator. She has led and contributed to the design and conduct of population, qualitative and mixed-methods studies and systematic reviews on chronic breathlessness and palliative care relating to patient and carer outcomes, methodology and the science of consent. Her methodological expertise includes randomised controlled trials, environmental scans, implementation science and quality improvement.

Dr Kochovska holds a PhD in Linguistics from Rutgers University (USA), a Master of Arts in Linguistics (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Arts in Russian and Linguistics (Highest Honours) from The University of Auckland (NZ). She was the inaugural Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) at IMPACCT, University of Technology Sydney. In that role she was also Coordinator of the IMPACCT Consumer Advisory Group, facilitating consumer involvement in healthcare research.

In recognition of her emerging leadership in healthcare research, Dr Kochovska was awarded the UTS Faculty of Health Inaugural Early Career Research Support Program 2020 and UTS Early Career Research Women Mentoring Pilot 2020.