The Empathy Initiative
Transforming Healthcare Education & Practice

People

The team involved with The Empathy Initiative

Distinguished Professor Tracy Levett-Jones

RN, PhD, M Ed & Work, BN

Tracy Levett-Jones holds the position of Distinguished Professor in the School of Nursing & Midwifery at The University of Technology Sydney. Tracy established and leads the UTS Empathy Initiative research group and the UTS Research Inspired Pedagogy Practice and Educational Design (RIPPED) group.

Tracy is recognised as a world-leading nursing and healthcare researcher. She was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2022 and is ranked as one of the World’s Top 1% of Scientists in the discipline of Nursing according to Stanford University.

Tracy’s research interests include: empathy, climate change and sustainability, patient safety, belongingness and clinical reasoning. Tracy has a strong track record of publications including authorship/editorship of 10 books, the most recent being ‘Clinical Reasoning: Learning to think like a nurse’ and ‘Critical Conversations for Patient Safety’, 58 book chapters and over 200 peer-reviewed articles in nursing, social science, allied health and medical journals. Tracy has been awarded over 7 million dollars in grant funding including a number of Category 1 grants. She has also been the recipient of 17 research awards and 15 teaching awards.

Associate Professor Jo River

Jo River, PhD, is a conjoint Associate Professor, Faculty of Health, UTS and Northern Sydney Local Health District. Jo has expertise in participatory research and education methods, including co-design, co-production, and community development. This involves partnering with key stakeholders and people with lived and living experience, to ensure research and education is grounded in community priorities and relevant and resonant to those most impacted by education, services and policy. Jo has developed a dialogical approach to amplify the voices of people with lived experience in research and education processes, and in publications often takes last author position to promote the voices of community members. Jo also uses arts-based research and translation methods to promote supportive and caring cultures in health services for nursing, medical, and allied health professional staff and trainees, including development of a verbatim theatre play, Grace Under Pressure. They have extensive experience designing and teaching undergraduate and postgraduate programs focusing on illness and lived experience epistemologies, empathic communication, population health, and innovative approaches to working with individuals, groups, and communities that attend to the underlying psychological, social, and structural determinants health and mental health.

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Associate Professor Jacqueline Pich

Dr Jacqueline PICH, BN (Hons I), BSc, PhD. Lecturer, University of Technology. Jacqui Pich is a dual university medal winner for her undergraduate and honours studies in her Bachelor of Nursing. Her PhD was a national study on the experiences of emergency nurses with patient-related violence and she has presented the findings at domestic and international conferences. She is part of an international Cochrane review on education and training for preventing and minimising workplace aggression directed toward healthcare workers. She is also involved in research on horizontal and vertical violence experienced by undergraduate nurses and has been involved in studies related to empathic interactions with people who have a disability.

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Associate Professor Suzanne Sheppard-Law (formerly Polis)

RN, PhD

Suzanne is an experienced mixed-method researcher focused on applied clinical, person-centred and public health research. She has expertise in developing experimental and quasi experimental research designs, epidemiological designs, survey development and qualitative methods. Suzanne’s program of research builds on her clinical expertise and knowledge of the health care sector having worked as an area Health Service Manager for 18 months and a Clinical Nurse Consultant for 15 years in acute, primary and outreach community-based healthcare settings across adult, antenatal and paediatric populations. Her program of research includes patient safety and person/family centred care, education and self-management of people living with complex chronic non-communicable liver disease and communicable diseases, acute exacerbation of chronic disease symptoms and deterioration. Suzanne commenced working as an Associate Professor of Person-Centred Nursing Research at the Prince of Wales Hospital & Sydney Hospital & Sydney Eye Hospital and the University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Health, School of Nursing & Midwifery in April 2023. Prior to this, Suzanne worked as Senior Lecturer in post-graduate nursing studies and Higher Degree Research Student Coordinator at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) for close to two years. Suzanne has five and half years' experience working as a Senior Research Fellow at the Sydney Children's Hospital Network, building the capacity of novice nurse researchers, establishing a program of child/family centred paediatric patient safety research and translating patient safety research into clinical practice. She is recognised for her engagement in working in partnership with priority populations and non-government organisations as a clinician, advocate and researcher.

Associate Professor Gabrielle Brand

RN, BN, MN (Research), SFHEA, PhD

Associate Professor Gabrielle Brand is a passionate nurse, educator and qualitative researcher at Monash Nursing & Midwifery. She has over 18 years’ experience in health professions education. Her research interests include narrative medicine, health humanities and creative and critical pedagogy. She is recognised as an education leader in the co-design of education with healthcare consumers and is the co-founder of the ‘Depth of Field’ © reflective learning resources which are used across Australia and New Zealand to teach current and future health professionals to move beyond “diagnosis’ to a more empathetic, humanistic models of care. More recently her research has included planetary health education, integrating tolerance of uncertainty pedagogy into higher education and co-designing simulation-based education with healthcare consumers. Gabrielle has published and presented her research in Australia and internationally, authored over 40 peer reviewed articles and several book chapters.

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Sue Dean

Sue Dean has taught communication in health programs for 25 years. Her area of research is the development of empathy and compassion in health care students and practitioners. She has been awarded over $300,00 for research into empathy and vulnerable communities individually and as a co- investigator. Sue has published extensively  in the area of  empathy and compassion in health care students and practitioners and in 2018 Sue will be a Visiting Scholar in The Oxford Empathic Care Program, University of Oxford where she will work on developing empathy training programs and collaborative research opportunities. She will also attend Stanford University for the Cultivating Compassion Training program.

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Natalie Govind

Natalie Govind BN (Hons I), RN, Grad Cert ICU Nursing, Lecturer, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney. Natalie is a dual medal recipient and received an Academic Staff Excellence Award for teaching in 2013. Natalie has experience with the design, implementation and evaluation of educational programs and educational platforms both in the clinical and academic environment. Natalie's motivation includes bridging the theory to practice gap for nursing students, and enhancing employability by meeting the needs of the health care workforce through the utilisation of simulated learning. Natalie’s research interests include: simulation, patient safety, clinical reasoning, peer teaching and empathy. Natalie has published book chapters, peer reviewed journal articles and presented at professional conferences nationally and internationally. The most recent article focused on the impact of a disability simulation on nursing students’ empathy. 

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Samantha Jakimowicz

Samantha Jakimowicz is an Associate Lecturer at UTS. She is currently coordinating the first-year clinical subjects in the Bachelor of Nursing. Samantha is a Registered Nurse with clinical and research experience in intensive care. Her philosophical outlook is based on the humanistic Rogerian model of unconditional positive regard, congruence and empathy. Samantha’s research interests lie with compassion, patient experience and nurse wellbeing. Samantha’s initial post graduate research concentrated on patient experience of nurse-led clinics and her doctoral work moved on a similar pathway focussing on patient-centredness, compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue in critical care nurses. This program of work was mixed method research and found that critical care nurses had mid-range levels of compassion satisfaction and fatigue, rather than the ideal high satisfaction and low fatigue. Workplace, experience and tenure were predictive factors in compassion satisfaction. Nurses’ experience of compassion fatigue impacted their capacity to provide compassionate patient-centred nursing. Moments of compassion satisfaction and fatigue occurred along a continuum, keeping time with critical care nurses’ expectations being met and their ability to meet perceived expectations. A conceptual framework was developed exploring strategies to assist nurses in provision of compassionate patient-centred nursing using Bowen Family Systems Theory therapy interventions to develop positive workplace culture and enhance critical care nurses compassion satisfaction and patient care quality. Samantha has published on these topics and been awarded a Local Health District Research Scholarship Award, Vice Chancellors Scholarship, Dean’s Citation and Best Nursing Paper and Poster.

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Dr Fiona Orr

Fiona Orr, RN, PhD, MLitt, BHS (Nursing) is the Director, International Activities and Lecturer, Mental Health Nursing, Faculty of Health, UTS. Fiona’s doctoral work was a concurrent mixed methods study exploring final year nursing students’ empathy and self-efficacy to communicate with people who hear voices, using an experiential voice-hearing simulation workshop. Quantitative analysis demonstrated significantly increased empathy and self- efficacy to communicate at six month follow-up. Qualitative analysis demonstrated that the level of realism of the simulation experience aroused emotions in the participants that contributed to their understanding of voice-hearing and development of empathy for people who hear voices. Her other research interests include live simulations with people diagnosed with a mental illness to develop nursing students’ empathy and therapeutic communication skills. She received a UTS Teaching Award (2013) and an Australian Award for University Teaching Citation (2015) for transforming nursing education through innovative simulations and collaborations with health care consumers.

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Katie Tunks Leach

RN, BN, BTeach (Prim & Sec), GCCritCareNurse (Emergency), MAdvN (Education). Associate Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney.

Katie is a Higher Degree Research Student, exploring how psychological and spiritual factors impact on the health and wellbeing of paramedics. Her current research explores the contribution of chaplains in the ambulance service to wellbeing outcomes for staff.

Katie has been a Registered Nurse for 22 years, specialising in Emergency and Trauma nursing. After completing post-graduate qualifications in Critical Care Nursing (Emergency), she further specialised in nurse education, moving into the tertiary education sector in 2012. Katie develops curriculum, co-ordinates postgraduate nursing subjects and teaches into the undergraduate nursing program. In 2019 she received a grant to develop a wellbeing module for postgraduate nursing students.

Aside from her role at UTS, Katie works as a chaplain for the NSW Ambulance Service.

Dr Elizabeth Brogan

Elizabeth is lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney and due to complete her PhD in September 2021. Her research interests include the dietary and physical activity behaviours of new graduate nurses, the development of workplace health promotion interventions and attitudes of undergraduate nursing students towards people with obesity. Elizabeth has published peer reviewed journal articles and presented nationally at professional conferences.

Elizabeth also has a Master of Nursing (Education), Graduate Diploma in Nursing and Graduate Certificate in Perioperative Nursing.

Elizabeth has been a perioperative nurse for 20 years and has experience across a diverse range of specialities including general and orthopaedic trauma, high risk obstetrics and urogynaecology. She also has clinical experience in surgical, day surgery and IVF nursing. Elizabeth currently coordinates first year nursing subjects with a focus on communication and empathy in healthcare. She also teaches in the third-year specialisation subject Introduction to Perioperative Nursing.

Deborah Debono

Deborah Debono is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Health Services Management, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health, UTS.

Deborah’s research and teaching engage with the healthcare sector and practitioners to support translation of evidence into practice to improve outcomes and experiences of consumers and health service providers.

Deborah specialises in evaluating the influence of context, culture, technology, education and social and professional relationships on health professionals’ implementation of policies and programs. She uses behaviour change theory and implementation science approaches to improve the implementation of quality and safety initiatives. Deborah’s research and teaching spans a diverse range of areas including investigation of: intersectional vulnerabilities in health care; service provision for young people with mental health and intellectual disabilities; consumer engagement; health services accreditation; medication administration; nursing leadership; quality improvement initiatives in healthcare.

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Dr Natalie Cutler

Natalie's nursing career has been focused on understanding and supporting the mental health needs of people who receive healthcare. She has worked as a clinician, educator, manager, policy advisor and assessor in mental health services. Natalie believes that nurses have a responsibility to listen to the voices of people who receive healthcare. She believes that compassion, empathy and human-centredness should inform everything health services do. Natalie has recently completed her PhD focused on understanding the lived experience of people who have been admitted to acute mental health units. The findings of her study showed that being treated with empathy and kindness contributed to feelings of safety for people admitted to this setting. Natalie has an interest in adapting 'taken-for-granted' approaches in health services to be as human-centred as possible. In line with this, she was instrumental in transforming a traditional aggression management training program into a human-centred program that was co-developed and co-delivered by people with lived experience of admission to an acute mental health unit. The program transformed a workplace culture of 'them and us' to one of 'all of us'.

Carolyn Antoniou

RN, MH, PhD Candidate

Carolyn Antoniou is a registered nurse with 30 years of clinical experience, specialising in rural and regional ED and more than a decade working as a lecturer in both undergraduate and post graduate education. Her areas of research interest include the development of professional values, Person-centred Care in healthcare and all aspects of nursing education. Carolyn holds a Masters of Health Leadership and Management and is currently undertaking her PhD exploring the development of professional values in undergraduate student nurses who have experienced a curriculum underpinned by the Person-centred philosophy, using narrative inquiry methodology. Over the last 10 years she has developed post graduate subjects around the principles of Practice Development and the theory and concepts of Person-centredness. She remains passionate about the possibilities for improved outcomes for all people in the healthcare environment based on the development of empathetic, compassionate and authentic care that creates environments where all persons can flourish.

Helen Rook

PHD RN

Dr Rook’s clinical and research activities have led to an exploration and critical examination of the impact of culture, values and coping mechanisms on therapeutic relationships, performance, and well-being. Helen is particularly interested in fostering organisational climates to build resilient, mindful, self-confident, empathetic people.

Helen is recognised as a leader in the field of nursing, empathy, and compassion. Her most recent work has examined the psychologization of emotions, and the meaning of empathy from cultural perspectives. Helen is Deputy Dean of Wellington Faculty of Health, Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, a registered nurse,  mind coach practitioner and Senior Lecturer. Helen is member of the Safe Healthcare Collaborative (SHC), Health Services Research Association Australia New Zealand (HSRAANZ), International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and is a Te Whatu Ora Wellbeing Champion.

Twitter: @caz_hales

Caz Hales

PhD, BNurs(Hons), RN

Dr Caz Hales (PhD, BNurs(Hons), RN) specialises in clinical and translational healthcare research with a specific focus on advances in safe healthcare practices where healthcare processes, technology design and use require environmental and educational considerations. One area of interest is how consumers experience their healthcare, and the role healthcare professionals play in creating positive social experiences during healthcare interactions. In 2019, Caz was awarded a University Research Impact Award for her obesity health services work which has delivered proven contributions to healthcare practices.  Caz has recently received funding to explore using virtual reality (VR) technology to create an education platform for health professionals that addresses care challenges, weight-bias and empathy when caring for patients of larger size.

Caz is a Senior Lecturer (Te Herenga Waka- Victoria University of Wellington), Honorary Research Fellow (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine), registered nurse, and a leading obesity healthcare services researcher in Aotearoa New Zealand with over 20 years of experience working in clinical practice. Caz is the Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Praxis in Aotearoa New Zealand Journal and a member of the Australasian Nursing Midwifery Clinical Trials Network (ANMCTN), and Health Services Research Association Australia New Zealand (HSRAANZ).

Twitter: @EllieBarkerRN
LinkedIn: @EllieBarkerRN

Ellie Barker

BN (Hons 1), RN. 

Ellie is a University of Newcastle Faculty Medal winner and received the ‘Nurse of the Year – New to Practice’ Award at the Central Coast Local Health District in her first year of professional practice. Ellie has experience in Paediatric and Adult Medical nursing. Her research interests include Empathy, Volunteering, and Patient Safety. Ellie has one publication in a Q1 journal, and has presented at several domestic conferences. Ellie created a Hospital Volunteering program for Medical and Nursing students, which she will be developing into her PhD research. Ellie is currently in the United Kingdom, where she is studying Patient Safety at Oxford University.