Administration

Email: getinfo@rdns.com.au
Telephone: 9536 5251 or 9536 5241
Fax: 9536 5300


General Manager, RDNS Helen Macpherson Smith Insitute of Community Health

Brief Profile: Dr Lisa Donohue is a registered nurse and midwife with an extensive research and education background and has worked in a variety of Clinical Research, Academic and Nursing and Midwifery Leadership positions over the past 20 years. Lisa has been General Manager of the RDNS Helen Macpherson Smith Institute of Community Health since October 2007.

The RDNS Institute provides education services to internal and external participants, is a registered training organisation, provides an education consultancy program to external agencies, coordinates the Graduate Year Program, nursing and medical student placements, provides support to the RN Division 2 program, delivers RDNS orientation and computer systems training and conducts clinical research and program evaluation in a range of areas including dementia care, chronic wound management, nutritional risk assessment, palliative care, HIV/AIDS, mental health, diabetes and continence.

Lisa is Chairperson of the RDNS Human Research Ethics Committee and the Best Practice Review Committee. She is a member of the RDNS Executive team, the Clinical Governance Committee, the Client Services Executive and Chairperson for a number of reference groups and steering committees that have responsibility for the implementation of externally funded research projects within RDNS. Her research interests include research methodologies, particularly RCT’s, new medical technologies, end of life considerations, the ethical and method challenges in conducting research with participants with mental health problems, informed consent and community health care research constraints.


Library

Brief Profile:  Dianne has a Masters degree in Applied Social Research and a Graduate Diploma in Sociology. Prior to commencing at the Helen Macpherson Smith Institute of Community Health Dianne worked as a medical sociologist/research officer for the Co-operative Research Centre for Asthma and Airways, located at the Alfred Hospital.  Her research focused on the priorities of people living with asthma as well as health professionals’ delivery of asthma care. Dianne’s PhD comprised a mixed methods study ‘understanding asthma in the older person’ followed by a randomised controlled trial of an educational intervention for GPs, designed to ‘improve the style and content of general practice consultations for older people with asthma’.

Dianne has previously, taught research methods and health sociology to undergraduate students at RMIT and La Trobe Universities, data management strategies to postgraduate students in the Department of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University and was the founding Treasurer and a past president of the Association for Qualitative Research. Currently, Dianne is the Deputy Convenor of the Primary Care Special Interest Group of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand and an Associate Editor for the Primary Care Respiratory Journal.

Brief Profile:  Suzanne is a Research Fellow and Registered Nurse. She was previously employed at RDNS as a Wound Management Clinical Nurse Consultant and has extensive experience practicing and researching in the community setting. Suzanne has led and supported quantitative and qualitative research in the areas of venous leg ulcer prevention and management, pressure ulcer prevention and management, wound product subsidisation, clinical practice guideline implementation, wound imaging and measurement and evaluation of best practice initiatives from the perspectives of clinicians and clients. She is an advocate for and contributor to evidence-based practice in wound management and maintains clinical practice and strong links with clinicians in the field. She is a member of the RDNS Wound Management Clinical Leadership Group, the Australian Wound Management Association Venous Leg Ulcer Guideline Committee and the Wound Management Association of Victoria. 

Brief Profile: Charne joined the Royal District Nursing Service Helen Macpherson Smith Institute of Community Health in 2003 and since this time has been the lead and co-investigator on a variety of evaluation projects and clinical trials undertaken in the Wound Research Portfolio. Charne is a member of the Wound Healing Society and Australian Wound Management Association (AWMA) and is Treasurer for AWMA (Vic). Charne has expertise in research methods and analysis, and her research interests include wound management, chronic illness management, and informal caregiving. Qualifications include Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in Psychology, a Graduate Diploma in Social Statistics, and Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment.  She is currently completing her PhD investigating spousal dyad adjustment following the diagnosis of a chronic illness.