Associate professor Catherine turner
Fulbright Senior Scholar Award
Media Profile
“The overall effectiveness of the Australian health care system is dependent on a knowledgeable, skilled and viable nursing workforce. Currently there is a critical shortage of qualified nurses. Through a large-scale longitudinal research project we can advance recruitment and retention data to maintain a “healthy” nursing workforce to support the health care system.”
Associate Professor Catherine Turner has received one of only three Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards in 2006, and will conduct research at the School of Medicine, Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University under the direction of Graham Colditz, Professor of Medicine. Professor Turner is the Coordinator of Research & Higher Degrees, School of Nursing at the University of Queensland (UQ) and has a PhD in Social & Preventive Medicine from UQ and was the inaugural graduate in one of the first Master of Nursing programs on offer in Australia at Flinders University. Catherine also has a graduate diploma in education and is a registered nurse who has taught epidemiology at UQ since 2000.
The Australian health system is constantly challenged on its efficiency and its effectiveness and the contribution nurses make to this system is important, particularly in small rural and remote communities, where a nurse may be the only health practitioner.
Catherine’s research will involve working with a team who run the ‘Harvard Nurses' Health Study’ which commenced in 1976. She is working on a similar program in Australia called the ‘Nurses and Midwives e-cohort’ research project to examine educational and workforce outcomes for the profession and population health outcomes for the women and men in the study. Catherine will look at the technical and social challenges of establishing and maintaining longitudinal studies and gather information to develop an innovative electronic methodology that can be employed in the 'Nurses & Midwives e-cohort'.
“Advancing electronic methods for data capture will significantly reduce the costs of large scale epidemiological population based studies.” Catherine added. This project will provide a basis for future collaboration between research teams at Harvard and University of Queensland.
“The broad aim of this project is to establish an ongoing longitudinal e-cohort study to examine factors associated with recruitment and retention of the current and future nursing workforce in order to develop retention strategies for the Australian and New Zealand context,” Catherine explains.
“My research aims to describe and quantify factors associated with recruitment and retention of students in nursing programs; the transition to practice, retention in the workforce and subsequent patterns of employment; the prevalence, incidence and associated risk factors for musculo-skeletal disorders and work-based injury outcomes and evaluate injury prevention strategies for students and nurses across all metropolitan, regional and remote areas.”