RESEARCHER PROFILE
Dr Rikki Jones (Filmed July 2024)
Senior Lecturer in Nursing
University of New England,
New South Wales, Australia
Dr Rikki Jones completed her Bachelor of Nursing degree at the University of New England (UNE) in 2000 and a Ph.D in Nursing at UNE in 2021. She has over 17 years of clinical nursing experience in emergency nursing, community health, rural and remote nursing, and theatre nursing. Since undertaking her role at UNE in 2017, Dr Jones has gained extensive experience in curriculum development/design, unit coordination, and is passionate quality meaningful research and student support.
At UNE, Dr Jones has been actively involved in and undertaking leadership roles in research, teaching and student support. Dr Jones is the HDR (higher degree research) coordinator for the School of Health (SOH), and the Chair of Research Committee SOH. Recently she has been awarded an MRFF (Medical Research Future Funds)- Early to Mid-Career Researcher Initiative 2023 for her research focusing on regional, rural and remote first responders’ mental health.
Dr Jones has been awarded to date a total of over AUD$430,000 in research funding. She is currently leading four large national research teams focusing on rural health and sustainable rural health workforce (include mental health of first responders, sexual violence in rural Australia, virtual simulated nursing placements, and nursing students experience with online learning, connection and transitioning to practice).
-
Role of Community Paramedicine in Non-Emergency Presentations
Dr Robbie King is a Lecturer in paramedicine and researcher at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Brisbane. He also continues to provide clinical care as a registered paramedic for community members served by a jurisdictional ambulance service. Dr King has gained significant experience working in an advanced practice, community paramedic style role, holding expert clinical insight into the nuances of paramedic-led community-based healthcare for non-emergency presentations. This often involves adopting a biopsychosocial approach, rather than following the biomedical model more associated with emergency medicine and paramedic culture.
-
Investigating the benefits of donor human milk for preterm infants
Together, SAHMRI and Lifeblood are leading a consortium to revolutionise the way human milk, and novel products made from human milk, are used as nutritional and medical interventions to improve health outcomes in vulnerable infants, but with potential application for a diverse range of medical indications.
Currently, babies who are born early preterm – before 32 weeks – are given donor milk when their own mother’s milk is not available or in short supply. Whether donor milk is beneficial for babies born just a few weeks early is unclear, as very little research has been undertaken with these babies.
The GIFT Trial will soon commence as an investigation between SAHMRI, the University of Adelaide, the Red Cross Lifeblood Milk Bank conducted at five sites across three states in Australia.
-
Personalised approaches to lung therapy
Dr. Adams’ research focus is on lung cancer, which is the deadliest of all cancers worldwide. He is working towards developing personalised approaches to pinpoint a therapy that is going to be most effective for the person with that disease. Dr. Adams’ research is focusing on chemotherapy and targeted therapy, and he is trying to identify upfront which of those tumours are likely to be resistant to the therapy. He then identifies strategies that will resensitize or increase the sensitivity of the tumour to the standard of care that is targeted therapy or chemotherapy.
