The Research team
Below is some information about the SWITCh trial research team. Please feel free to contact them if you have any questions.
Nigel Lee—Student Researcher
Nigel is a Clinical Midwife within Mater Mothers’ Hospital’s birth suites. He has gained broad experience across all areas of midwifery in regional and metropolitan areas within Australia, and around the world. Nigel is passionate about integrating research into practice to improve midwifery and maternity care and support normal birth. Nigel led a team of midwives in the introduction of the use sterile water injections for back pain in labour at Mater Mothers’ Hospital in 2009. He recently gained a Golden Casket Clinical Research Scholarship to undertake a Master of Philosophy research degree through the Australian Catholic University.
Sue Kildea—Principal Supervisor
Sue holds a Clinical Chair in Midwifery, a joint appointment between Mater Health Services and the Australian Catholic University. As a midwife with experience across both tertiary and primary health care settings, her interests lie in safety, quality and professional collaboration within maternity care. Sue believes maternity health services must be woman-centred, respect differences, offer choice, ensure cultural security and provide an enabling environment for all women, wherever they live. She has a particular interest in increasing the capacity of the health workforce to maximise their effectiveness in making a difference to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. Sue is a strong collaborative researcher, with expertise in participatory action research, evaluation and randomised controlled trials. Sue believes in using research as a strategy for change and believes midwives can significantly contribute to the improvement of services and care provided to childbearing women.
Vanessa Wright—Co-investigator
Vanessa began her nursing career in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1980s before moving to Portsmouth in the United Kingdom to practice as a midwife. Vanessa immigrated to Australia with her family in 2008 and now works as a clinical midwife within Mater Mothers’ Hospital’s birth suites. Vanessa has worked as a nurse and midwife in a number of different countries and settings, including a period as flight nurse repatriating sick and injured patients from foreign countries back to their country of origin. Vanessa has been involved in a number of clinical trials including the ORACLE and ASPIRIN trials.
Dr Michael Beckmann—Co-investigator
The Director of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Mater, Michael is a Specialist Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. Michael is also the co-head of Maternity Stream, a Mater Mothers’ Research Centre Program. Michael gained Membership of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and was presented with the RANZCOG medal for outstanding performance in membership examination. As an experienced clinical researcher, Michael is involved in a number of maternity care and women’s health research projects, including a randomised controlled trial of induction of labour methods.
Peter Coxeter—Co-investigator
Peter is a Senior Research Officer at Mater Mothers’ Research Centre. He has completed a BHSc (Acupuncture; Australian College of Natural Medicine) including hospital internship (Nanning, Guanxi, PRC), volunteered acupuncture services for an acute heroin detoxification program (“Wastelands Detox Programme”; QuIVaa) and worked in private clinical practice. After completing a Masters of Public Health (UQ), Peter has gained broad public health research and teaching experience primarily within the School of Population Health, UQ (Centre for General Practice, Centre for Health Promotion and Cancer Prevention Research, Queensland Alcohol and Drug Education and Research, Queensland Evaluation Group) and the University of Sydney (Herbal Medicines Research and Education Centre, Faculty of Pharmacy). He was most recently employed at the Viertel Centre for Research in Cancer.
Acknowledgements
The research team wish to thank the following organisations for their generous support of this project: