New nursing and midwifery research network launched

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By Karen Keast | Date Updated:

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BRICs Network co-chair Professor Isabel Higgins

New South Wales is now home to a new nursing and midwifery research initiative.

The recently launched BRICs (Building Research and Interdisciplinary Collaborations) Nursing and Midwifery Network has forged a group of researchers focused on encouraging the growth of world class interdisciplinary research, involving nurses and midwives, nationally and internationally.

The group is the work of the Hunter Medical Research Institute, Hunter New England Health and The University of Newcastle.

BRICs Network co-chair Professor Isabel Higgins said the network will provide an essential support base for nursing and midwifery research throughout the state.

“The network is important because it has the ability to build capacity for research and clinical innovation within an interdisciplinary framework that is strategically aligned, and which will provide direction to healthcare policy and practice both nationally and globally,” she said in a statement.

Through the University of Newcastle’s School of Nursing and Midwifery Collaborating Center for Older Person Care,

Professor Higgins’ research focuses on pain and symptom management, end of life care, family members and needs of carers, practice issues and practice redesign.

Doctor Vanessa McDonald is also co-chair of the network, as well as a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery and a practising clinician as a respiratory clinical nurse consultant at John Hunter Hospital’s Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine.

“With such an exciting range of researchers in the BRICs network, it has the potential to not only build a strong collaboration of local researchers in the field who have never before worked together but to also put the Hunter on the map as international leaders in nursing and midwifery research,” Dr McDonald said.