Professor Sandra Dunn, a leading nursing educator and clinician, has joined the Graduate School for Health Practice at Charles Darwin University.
Her appointment strengthens the university’s commitment to quality postgraduate education for nurses in its partnership with the NT Department of Health and Community Services.
Professor Dunn began her education and nursing practice in Canada, continued it in the United States and completed her formal education with a PhD from the Queensland University of Technology in 1995.
She investigated relationships between the clinical learning environment and problem solving ability and confidence of undergraduate nursing students.
For the past decade she has been a clinical chair of Flinders University and Director of Nursing and Midwifery Research at Flinders Medical Centre.
Her role in Adelaide ranged across developing education programs for nurse practitioners to generating and applying evidence to improve practices at the hospital.
Professor Dunn is probably best known for her leadership in setting the national standards for nurse practitioners. She is an expert clinician who provided direct patient care in the Intensive Care ward of FMC until recently, and is highly regarded as a clinician researcher by other disciplines.
She says she is enthusiastic about beginning a range of practice development projects in collaboration with the Department of Health and Community Services that will make a difference to the services provided by nurses and other health care professionals.
Professor Dunn will also provide some targeted input into the undergraduate programs of the university.