Symposium

Melissa Andison

Director, People Before Technology

Melissa is a trained Occupational Therapist and Clinical Safety Officer, a former National Chief Clinical Information Officer Advisory Panel member, UK and British Computer Society Fellow.

Her unique perspective of innovation stems from working with startups to large scale healthcare organisations and capital city digital programs. Melissa combines her clinical, transformation, advisory and academic experience to drive a ‘people before technology’ ethos in healthcare innovation.

Kim Gourlay

Simulation Coordinator, The Prince Charles Hospital

Kim graduated as a Registered Nurse in December 2004, and has worked in specialty areas including Neurosurgery, Lower GI and General Medicine in hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and England.

Kim’s career in simulation began as the Acting Simulation Coordinator at TPCH in July 2017. After a brief term at Logan Hospital, Kim returned to The Prince Charles Hospital permanently.

Kim is the Pocket Centre Lead at TPCH and works alongside Nurse, Medical and Allied Health Educators, assisting with the development and delivery of simulation education.

Michael Guerin

Nurse Educator, Simulation, Rockhampton Hospital

Michael is a Registered Nurse and Simulation Educator at Rockhampton Hospital. With a background in critical care, Michael was first drawn into the world of simulation after attending a CSDS Emergencies Events Management Workshop shortly after the CSDS was established.

Passionate about creating engaging learning experiences, Michael finds fulfillment in designing simple yet effective solutions to prepare healthcare staff in Central Queensland for delivering safe, high-quality care. Outside of work, Michael enjoys indulging in 'blue water therapy' and the pursuit of the elusive red emperor.

Ross Hadfield

Strategic Advisor, WeKo

Ross is a health technology founder, PhD candidate, educator and serves in the Australian Defence Force. His unique perspective of innovation draws from working globally, including the Australian, American, Austrian, and Norwegian healthcare systems.

Ross continues to blend his versatile experience from industry, academia, and state and local healthcare perspectives to influence digital health strategy, architecture, and transformation.

Dr Toby Lyndham

FACEM and EMET Lead for the Rockhampton Region

Dr Lyndham is an Emergency Medicine consultant with a keen interest in resuscitation and education which blend well with simulation. He graduated from Birmingham University and came to Australia in 2015.

He currently works at Rockhampton Base Hospital where he is the local lead for the EMET (Emergency Medicine Education and Training) program for the Central Queensland Hub. This is a program designed at providing emergency medicine education at a senior doctor level to rural practitioners with a variety of backgrounds. The program helps to upskill individuals and aid in providing the region with a higher level of emergency care. This education is provided through a variety of methods, including in person sessions with a mix of didactic and in situ simulation in their resus spaces with their staff, as well as online topic discussions and group workshops for the whole region. He is passionate about education and wanting improve the quality of care given to patients in more regional settings.

Outside of work Toby enjoys anything fitness related he can get into from working out in the gym, completing obstacle races to hiking in the hills with his dogs.

Dr Mia McLanders

Research Manager, Clinical Skills Development Service
Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith University
Adjunct Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Dr Mia McLanders is Manager, Research at the Clinical Skills Development Centre. Mia is also Adjunct Lecturer at The University of Queensland, an Associate Editor for the Australian Journal of Psychology, and Content Expert on emergency algorithms for ILCOR (the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation).

Mia has won an International Resilience Engineering Association award, and an Australian Resuscitation Council award, for her work with neonatal resuscitation teams, and a Human Factors and Ergonomics Society award for her work on patient monitoring displays.

Dr Nathan Peters

Specialist Anaesthetist, Wesley Anaesthesia and Pain Management, Queensland
Staff Specialist Anaesthetist, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine, University of Queensland
Honorary Adjunct Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, University of Melbourne

Dr Nathan Peters is a Senior Staff Specialist Anaesthetist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. In addition to clinical anaesthesia care his particular interest is in ensuring the benefits Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) are realised for patients at the bedside.

In pursuing this interest, he has developed state-wide educational programs as well as published multiple original research articles in this area.

Dr Ben Symon

Clinical Director of Simulation, Mater Education
Simulation Consultant at Children's Health Hospital Queensland
Paediatric Emergency Physician at Queensland Health
Co-producer of Simulcast Podcast

Dr Ben Symon is a Paediatric Emergency Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital and a Simulation Consultant for Children’s Health Queensland. He is also the Director of Clinical Simulation for Mater Health.

Ben is the co-producer of the ‘Simulcast’ Podcast, a podcast connecting educators with simulation literature. He is a member of the Bond Translational Simulation Collaborative and Faculty for the Debriefing Academy.

Ben has a growing interest in the intersection of simulation education and quality improvement and a deep love of debriefing and learning conversations in general.

Andrea (Andi) Thompson

Nurse Educator, Princess Alexandra Hospital

Andi is a Simulation Nurse educator at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

A self-professed nursing dinosaur, Andi’s professional journey has reflected the impact of healthcare simulation over the last 35 years – from hospital trained student nurse working within a strict hierarchical system, to an anaesthetic nurse first learning of the Principles of Crisis Resource Management, to becoming an inaugural simulation coordinator and educator at the Skills Development Centre.

Andi is passionate about the creating and delivering simulation-based experiences that enable healthcare workers to reflect upon and improve their practice.

Dr Chirag Patel

Staff Specialist in Clinical Genetics, Genetic Health Queensland

Dr Patel trained in the UK and has been a Clinical Geneticist at Genetic Health Queensland since 2013. He has over 17 years of experience in clinical genetics and clinical diagnostic genomic testing. He has a special interest in rare paediatric genetic diseases, genetic kidney disease, genomic technologies, and medical education.

He is the co-founder and co-lead of the first Australian renal genetics MDT clinical service, and has contributed to mainstreaming of genetics in nephrology. He was the state lead for the Genomics Health Futures Mission (GHFM) funded Acute Care Genomics study, which provided ultra-rapid genetic testing to children in NICU and PICU. He was state co-lead for several Australian Genomics funded genomic implementation projects (Acute Care Genomics, KidGen Renal Genetics, and HIDDEN). He was the clinical lead for the whole genome sequencing (WGS) Partnership Program, which implemented clinical WGS for paediatric patients in Queensland.

He is an expert reviewer for PanelApp Australia, an online platform of gene panels used for clinical diagnostic testing by Australian laboratories. He has created and updated several disease panels with gene-disease associations. He is on the clinical review panel of the Australian Functional Genomics Network and reviews the selection of patients suitable for functional studies to assess suspicious variants and novel genes.

He is actively involved in developing education in clinical genetics and genomic medicine for undergraduates and postgraduates at state and national level. This is delivered through decision aids (e.g. renal, cardiac, endocrine), clinical guidelines (e.g. statewide clinical referrals, genetic testing), lectures (e.g. university, RACP), clinical placements (e.g. medical students), webinars, workshops (e.g. renal, acute care, paediatric genomics), and online modules.