Associate Professor Anne Williams
Associate Professor Anne Williams has been with the WACCPC for 7 years. From 2002-2006 she held a joint appointment between Edith Cowan University and the Centre for Nursing Research, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital as a Research Fellow in Clinical Nursing. From 2006 she joined Curtin University as a Research Fellow in the WACCPC. Anne currently works collaboratively with the Centre for Nursing Research, Innovations and Quality and the SolarisCare Foundation at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and holds and adjunct appointment at Edith Cowan University. From 2004-2008 she was the Research/Project Coordinator for Nursing at St John of God Hospital Subiaco.
Associate Professor Williams qualified as a Registered Nurse with a BSc (Hons) in Nursing in 1985 from the South Bank University and St Thomas's Hospital in London. She worked as a Staff Nurse in the acute care hospital setting in the United Kingdom until 1989 when she emigrated to Perth. Australia. Anne worked on the wards at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital before being seconded to the Centre for Nursing Research in 1990. Finding here niche here as a Research Nurse, she went on the postgraduate education achieving a Post Graduate Diploma in Health Sciences (1990), a MSc (Nursing) (1996) and a PhD with a commendation from the Chancellor (2003). Anne received an Australian Clinical Research Training Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council 2004-2007.
Associate Professor Williams research program focuses on optimising the comfort (emotional and physical) of patients and their families in the acute care hospital setting. Recent projects in this area have concentrated on the care of living kidney donors, cardiac and cancer patients. As part of her post-doctoral work, Associate Professor Williams in collaboration with Professor Linda Kristjanson, developed a new instrument that evaluated the emotional care provided by healthcare staff to patients. There has been interest in the use of this instrument from various parts of the world, and the one of her current project is further examining the psychometric properties of this instrument.
Associate Professor Williams is also interested in developing strategies to facilitate the transference of research based knowledge into clinical practice. She has just completed a project, in collaboration with Associate Professors Oldham and Toye, funded by the Australian Research Council in collaboration with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and St John of God Hospital Subiaco. This project demonstrated improvements in pain assessment at two of the acute care hospitals in Perth.
Associate Professor Williams has recently started collaborating with the SolarisCare Foundation. This is a charitable organisation with cancer support centres located at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and St John of God Hospital in Subiaco. The drop-in centres provide emotional support, information and complementary therapies to patients and their carers. Anne is currently leading a project exploring the contribution these integrative therapies to the comfort of patients with cancer. This work builds on previous work and aims to provide direction for further research in this area.
