PhD Candidate – Elyssia Bourke

Elyssia is a PhD candidate through the University of Melbourne, Department of Paediatrics. Her supervisors are Prof Franz Babl, A/Prof Simon Craig, Prof Andrew Davidson and A/Prof Jonathan Knott.

Elyssia is an emergency registrar currently completing her final stage of training. She has a special interest in paediatrics and toxicology and is excited to learn more about clinical research through this PhD.

Her PhD project is a mixed methods study looking at a number of facets of paediatric acute severe behavioural disturbance. This PhD comprises part of the Medical Research Future Fund Million Minds Mission grant “The Kids are Not Okay: Emergency Department management of acute mental health crises in children and young people.”

The main components of the PhD will include:
1. A systematic review of pharmacological management of acute severe behavioural disturbance (ASBD) in the paediatric population and a review of current clinical practice guidelines
2. A survey of current Australasian clinical practice related to management of paediatric ASBD in the emergency department
3. A qualitative study examining clinicians experiences managing children with ASBD in the emergency department
4. A qualitative study describing children and parents experiences when they or their child present to the emergency department with ASBD
5. A retrospective observational study of the current management of ASBD
6. A RCT of pharmacological management of ASBD examining outcomes including efficacy and side effect profiles of the chosen medications.

 

PhD Candidate – Victoria Ramsden

Tory Ramsden is a PhD candidate and recipient of an NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence Paediatric Emergency Medicine Implementation Science Stipend Scholarship which is being administered through Australian Catholic University. Her primary supervisor is Prof Elizabeth McInnes with co-supervisors Professor Franz Babl, Dr Emma Tavender and Prof Peter Wilson.

Tory has experience working as a paediatric intensive care nurse for multiple years and is currently a lecturer at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, School of Nursing Sydney.

Her PhD is a continuation of the PREDICT bronchiolitis knowledge translation study. A cluster randomised controlled trial has shown that tailored, theory informed implementation interventions are effective in improving management of infants with bronchiolitis. Tory’s PhD will undertake a mixed methods study to explore the factors influencing sustainability of these improvements.

PhD Candidate – Charmaine Gray

Charmaine is a PhD candidate through the University of Adelaide Department of Medicine, School of Paediatrics and Reproductive Health. Her supervisors are Dr Jennifer Couper and Dr Simon Craig. Charmaine is an advanced trainee in Emergency medicine at the Women and Children’s Hospital, Adelaide. Her work will contribute to the development of an international consensus on outcomes used in asthma research and will help to understand if demographic or clinical features can be used to predict need for intervention and timing of successful discharge in children with acute asthma.

PhD Candidate – Stephen Hearps

Stephen is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Department of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. His supervisors are Prof Franz Babl, Prof Vicki Anderson and Dr Anneke Grobler. Stephen is a biostatistician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and honorary Associate Professor at the Department of Critical Care at the University of Melbourne.

His PhD work explore paediatric clinical decision rules (CDRs), regularly used by clinicians to decide on the next action in a child’s diagnosis or management in illness or injury (ie, hospital admission), or the likelihood of a disease/condition. This will utilise existing large-scale datasets in the areas of cranial imaging following head injury, diagnosis of delayed recovery diagnosis following concussion, and definition of sepsis & risk of mortality after sepsis. The aim of the work is to improve the clinical pathways of children in a hospital setting.