Professor Claire Johnson is the Vivian Bullwinkel Chair of Palliative Care Nursing at Monash School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Eastern Health End of Life Care Clinical Lead, and is an adjunct professor in the Medical School at The University of Western Australia. Claire is a registered nurse with experience of clinical care across the life-span. She completed her PhD in Health Behaviour Sciences (University of Newcastle,2007), exploring access to, and use of, palliative care services for people diagnosed with cancer. Prior to her current appointment Claire managed the Cancer and Palliative Care Research and Evaluation Unit at the University of Western Australia where she lead a broad portfolio of research which aimed to improve outcomes for people affected by a cancer diagnosis or advanced chronic illness. She contributes to changes in policy and practice through her research which explores gaps and development and evaluation of innovative interventions in end of life care and through her role on local and state health service implementation and advisory committees. She has co-authored numerous health services reports which have helped reframe program delivery in Western Australia.

Central to Claire’s current position, is her appointment as Clinical Lead for End of Life care at Eastern Health. In this leadership role Claire will lead the multidisciplinary health services to develop and implement best practice care and promote translation of research into clinical practice to support quality care at the end of life for all.

Claire currently leads a research program to develop a method for routine collection of information from general practitioners about the end of life care provided to deceased primary care patients, and the use of data to inform capacity building in primary care. She is a chief investigator for the internationally acclaimed Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) and has worked widely with palliative care services to embed routine clinical assessment in their day to day care of patients and to optimise the use of data to promote best practice.

Development and evaluation of models of palliative and end of life care, end of life care in primary care, health services research, translational research, mixed methods research, use of routinely collected data for quality improvement.