Leonie Short is a Dental Practitioner and Dental Therapist. She started working as a dental therapist in Rural NSW and then moved into being an academic and researcher. Through her career, Leonie has worked at 6 universities across New South Wales and Queensland, and remaining community focused.
Prior to starting her business, Leonie, was a consumer advocate in the fields of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, substance abuse before concentrating on oral health. Her passion led her to start her business.
Seniors Dental Care Australia focuses on oral health care training and education for workers in the aged home care and disability sectors. These are the whole range of health workers from carers, enrolled nurses, registered nurses, allied health practitioners and general practitioners recognising the need to improve oral health care. Leonie talks about the passion and attention to delivering oral health care teachings.
As a hands on practitioner, Leonie typically delivers training in person and through a shift pattern at seniors or disability support facilities, and also via online. She feels in person and on site delivery is more engaging and raises confidence levels in carers.
Over the past 8 years Leonie has encountered smelly mouths, rotted teeth, infected gums and dirty dentures. Her aims are for people to have nice healthy clean mouths, to be able to smile, to talk, to taste and to eat.
Without a clean mouth, cases of aspiration pneumonia and infected endocarditis increase leading to hospitalisation and death. Leonie talks about a case in the UK of ill-fitting dentures being untreated, compounded by COVID precautions to oral examination leading to the patient choking on her dentures and dying.
Leonie’s mission is to have improved oral health experiences and outcomes, however she recognises, the health system really needs to work hard to make it happen and for people to understand why it needs to be a priority.
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Medical colleges reform to address accessibility, affordability and rural challenges
Australia’s specialist medical colleges are introducing significant changes to their training selection processes to tackle the ongoing shortage of specialist doctors in rural and remote areas. The Council of Presidents of Medical Colleges (CPMC), in collaboration with the National Rural Health Commissioner, has unveiled new guidelines that prioritise candidates with rural backgrounds and experience during trainee selection.
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Imperatives for women diagnosed with ovarian cancer
Professor Clare Scott, a pioneering clinician scientist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, also serves as a medical oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and the Royal Women’s Hospital.
Her comprehensive training in medical oncology has fuelled her specialisation in gynaecological cancer, combining rigorous research with clinical trials to improve patient outcomes. With over a decade of involvement in ANZGOG, Australia’s foremost gynaecologic cancer research organisation, she is deeply committed to advancing research and saving lives.
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Emerging researcher appointed to James Packer Chair in Mood Disorders at UNSW
The UNSW Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health is widely renowned as the pre-eminent psychiatry research department in the country and one of the leading university psychiatry research groups internationally. In 2023 it celebrated 60 Years of Psychiatry & Mental Health at UNSW Sydney.
Australian Health Journal spoke with Professor Kimberlie Dean, Head of the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health at UNSW Sydney, about the recent appointment of mental health disorders expert and clinician researcher Dr Aswin Ratheesh to lead the James Packer Chair in Mood Disorders at UNSW Sydney.
