Emeritus Professor
Helen Edwards

Biography

Background
Professor Helen Edwards has worked in tertiary education for 28 years, and has been Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at QUT since 1997. Under her direction, the School has developed a leading reputation nationally and internationally, and is known for its extensive range of courses, positive graduate outcomes, effective industry linkages, quality PhD program, and high research profile.
Professor Edwards’s own research has focussed on clinical and educational interventions related to ageing and chronic disease. In particular Professor Edwards research interests include

• self management


• wound healing


• quality of life and family care giving


• intervention trials.

She has received significant funding, including NHMRC and ARC grants, to examine models of

• care for people with chronic leg ulcers


• self management of chronic disease


• family care-giving


• resident-staff interactions


• the impact of quality of care on quality of life.

From this, she has authored 80 refereed articles, seven book chapters, and 15 research reports. Professor Edwards co-edited the medical-surgical textbook that has been adopted by most Australian nursing schools (Brown, D., Edwards, H. (2007) Lewis’s Medical-Surgical Nursing: Assessment and Management of Clinical Problems 2nd ed Australia: Elsevier).
She has also been a Director of Queensland Villages, an organisation that manages three retirement villages in Queensland. Professor Edwards is the Director for the Queensland Dementia Training and Study Centre and a member of the Dementia Collaborative Reserach Centre - Carers and Consumers. She is also a Program Leader for the Cooperative Research Centre for Wound Management Innovation.
Project highlights

• 2010-2018: Cooperative Research Centre for Wound Management Innovation.  Commonwealth Government


• 2010-2013: Queensland Dementia Training and Study Centre (Department of Health and Ageing)


• 2009-2010: Pathways to healing: determining effective care pathways for chronic wounds for timely healing, prevention and cost effectiveness, Australian Research Council Linkage


• 2009-2010: Online Geriatric Assessment, National Health and Medical Research Council.


• 2008-2012: Preventing hospital readmissions and loss of functional ability in high risk older adults: a randomised controlled trial, Australian Research Council


• 2008-2010: Creating Champions for Skin Integrity – Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care, Australian Government, Department of Health and Ageing.


• 2007 - 2010: Can a palliative care framework ameliorate complicated grief and improve medium term health outcomes in carers of people at the terminal stage of a dementing illness, Alzheimer’s Australia Research (Scholarship).

Industry research activities

• 2008 -2012: Strategic Development of nursing through nurse education in Viet Nam, Atlantic Philanthropies


• 2009: Wound Healing Outreach Program, QUT Engagement Innovation Fund


• 2007- 2008: Wound Healing Community Outreach Service Project, Cecilia Kilkeary Foundation.