Teaching

Katrina's primary interests in education include palliative care, communication and emotional presence development. Katrina has a long history of supporting palliative care and end of life undergraduate and post graduate curriculum development across Schools and Departments in the Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, and delivery using state of the art national learning resources. Katrina is a member of the Faculty of Medicine Nursing & Health Sciences Collaborative Care Curriculum group generating opportunities for interprofessional student learning. Katrina developed a novel Peer Support Program enabling experienced Nursing and Midwifery students to support new students navigating the complexities of study and university life, which is now part of a faculty-wide program. In collaboration with Library and Learning Skills Advisors across campuses, Katrina developed a week-long intensive Transition to University (T2U) program targeting students directly entering the second year of Bachelor of Nursing or Bachelor of Nursing/Bachelor of Midwifery(Hons) via alternative learning pathways. This program has positively contributed to integration for students who have completed T2U. Katrina accepts Honours and Masters students wishing to undertake minor research projects, particularly those focussed on palliative care, end of life care, professional communication, empathy and self-care. 

Research

Katrina is lead for palliative care and end of life care for Monash Nursing and Midwifery. She has been researching in the area of access and equity of access to palliative and end of life care since 2008. She was lead researcher in a National Health and Medical Research Council grant examining access of paramedics to palliative care knowledge, skill and services. More recently, Katrina’s research has examined the issues and barriers related to homeless and other priority populations’ access to palliative and end of life care. She is also involved in a number of educational evaluations related to learning and teaching interventions in nursing and midwifery and other health disciplines. One of these significant projects is an interprofessional cultural empathy study to examine the effectiveness of simulation strategies in the development of learner skills and attitudes.

Katrina is active supervisor of students at Honours, Masters and PhD levels. Her students have interests in palliative and end of life care, barriers to access to healthcare for homelessness and other priority populations, cultural empathy skill development and models of care and the perceptions of consumers.

Research methodology:

Critical Discourse Analysis, mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), thematic analysis,  and systematic review with meta-analysis and meta-synthesis.