Don't miss your chance to hear from our amazing line-up of speakers! Get in the know about your industry and secure your spot at our Annual Professional Conference: Stronger Together - Uniting Nurses and Midwives for Global Health.
Dr Michelle Acorn
Sarah Almeroth
Taryn Brumfit
Adj Assoc Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM
Dr Kate Davis
Professor Marion Eckert
Lucy Haslam
Dr Anne Hofmeyer
Jane Homberger
Kate Kennedy
Bryan Macdonald
Associate Professor Adam Montagu
Greg Sharplin
Kaurna Elder Uncle Tamaru
Dr Michelle Acorn
Dr Michelle Acorn has served as the inaugural Chief Nurse with the ICN since May 2021, providing strategic and operational executive leadership expertise to advance and strengthen nursing and health policy.
She is a Doctor of Nurse Practitioner/Nursing Practice, dually registered as both a Primary Health Care and Adult Nurse Practitioner. Michelle is internationally certified as a Global Nurse Consultant.
Michelle was inducted as an inaugural Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Nursing (FCAN), a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), and a Fellow of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (FFNMRCSI, Ad Eundem).
Dr Acorn’s diverse clinical expertise includes practicing in the Emergency, as a Hospitalist, innovating GAIN (Geriatric Assessment and Intervention Networks), and pioneering the most responsible provider (MRP) impacts of a NP–led model of inpatient hospital care and primary care in corrections.
In 2018, she modernized the Provincial Chief Nursing Officer role in Ontario, Canada to provide ministerial strategic nursing expertise as the technical and clinical advisor. She co-chaired the national Principal Nursing Advisors Task Force and acted as the Canadian delegate.
Michelle’s scholarship and knowledge translation are in textbooks, peer-reviewed articles, evidence informed toolkits, and quality improvement initiates. She is recognised for her leadership, mentorship, preceptorship and teaching locally to globally.
Sarah Almeroth
Sarah serves as an Environment and Sustainability Officer for the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN) where she is leading the development and implementation of NALHN’s Environmental and Sustainability Strategy. This strategy is the first of its kind in South Australia and Sarah has been integral in pushing for improved sustainability outcomes in the South Australian healthcare sector.
Sarah has an extensive background as a skilled clinician and has spent over 11 years as a surgical and anaesthetic nurse. She currently Chairs NALHN’s Waste Management Committee and its Environmental and Sustainability Expert Advisory Group. Sarah also sits on South Australia’s Nitrous Reduction Working Group and forms part of the State Emissions Reduction Project.
Sarah is passionate about promoting sustainability in healthcare and reducing NALHN’s environmental footprint through grassroot initiatives and behaviour change. She is a firm believer that small steps all add up and can have significant impacts for our environment.
Key Note Speaker - Taryn Brumfit
Taryn Brumfitt is an award-winning filmmaker, bestselling author and internationally soughtafter keynote speaker. Recently named the 2023 Australian of the Year, she is a fiercely passionate advocate for social change and her message has reached more than 200 million people around the world.
Taryn is the co-Executive Director of The Embrace Collective, founder of the Body Image Movement, director of the inspiring documentaries EMBRACE and EMBRACE KIDS, and author of four books. Her global crusade to help people embrace their bodies has seen her recognised by UN Women, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls and the Geena Davis Institute.
Taryn has delivered more than 100 keynote addresses, and her talk at Google HQ in Silicon Valley was live-streamed to every Google office in the world.
In 2018, she was recognised in the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence awards and received the SA Award for Excellence in Women's Leadership from Women and Leadership Australia. She was also crowned EY Entrepreneur of the Year, South Australia, and has been named among GE’s highest-rated speakers.
With a powerful, universal message and unwavering commitment to her cause, Taryn Brumfitt is a true force to be reckoned with.
Adj Assoc Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM
Elizabeth is passionate about promoting and advancing the professional and industrial interests of nurses, midwives and personal care assistants.
CEO/Secretary since March 2008, Elizabeth works tirelessly to achieve the goals of ANMF (SA Branch) and to create a future that our members seek and so justly deserve.
She holds qualifications in nursing, education, leadership, management and law, and worked as a solicitor at DBH immediately prior to taking up her current role.
Dr Kate Davis
Kate Davis has worked in nursing leadership roles in the public, private and non-profit sectors, and competed her PhD in 2021 through the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre, UniSA.
Her research focused on developing and implementing a nurse-led model of care –coordination across the acute and primary healthcare sectors.
Kate recently led a state-wide review and development of a transition to professional practice program for registered and enrolled nurses and midwives in South Australia and is currently a Research Fellow with the University of South Australia, Clinical and Health Sciences.
Kate’s research interests include workplace and organisational culture, and nursing and health system models of care.
Professor Marion Eckert
Professor Marion Eckert is the Foundation Director of the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre (RBRC), University of South Australia established in partnership with the ANMF (SA Branch) in September 2016 and the Inaugural Professor of Cancer Nursing in SA at UniSA and Adjunct Professor at Flinders University.
Marion brings more than 30 years’ experience in health care; she does not have a traditional academic background, but one that has been embedded in direct health service delivery, strategy, implementation science and translational research.
Lucy Haslam
Lucy Haslam is a retired Registered Nurse who was thrust into criminality in 2014 when her youngest son Daniel, used cannabis to manage the symptoms of his chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting whilst having treatment for stage 4 bowel cancer.
The quality of life that cannabis provided Dan, inspired Lucy to lobby to change the legal status of cannabis in Australia. Together they formed a charity called United in Compassion and took their fight to legalise cannabis to the Australian Government with widespread community support.
The legalisation of cannabis occurred on the first anniversary of Dan’s death at age 25. Lucy continues to work in the space as an active advocate to improve the regulations and limitations to patient access.
Dr Anne Hofmeyer
Anne Hofmeyer PhD holds Adjunct appointments with the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre and Clinical and Health Sciences, UniSA. She is Visiting Professor at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.
Having retired from UniSA in 2018, she continues to work on a variety of projects, many of which focus on writing with local and international colleagues about empathy, self-compassion, emotion regulation, and our understanding of compassion as an antidote to empathic distress fatigue. The relevance and timing of this work is a critical response to the global wave of anxiety, exhaustion, burnout and the widespread call for empathic leadership and resilient healthcare organisations.
Anne holds a PhD and a Masters Degree in Primary Health Care (palliative care specialty) from Flinders University, Australia. Following completion of her PhD in 2002, she was recruited to the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta, Canada where she served as A/Professor and A/Dean of the Bachelor of Nursing Science Program.
In 2004, she completed an Intensive Bioethics Course at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington DC. In 2005, she was awarded a two–year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Knowledge Translation funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation & Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In 2010 she served as Associate Professor at the Australian Catholic University and as Deputy Director of the Nursing Research Unit at St Vincent’s & Mercy Private Hospital, Melbourne.
Prior to her academic career, she had extensive clinical experience in radiation oncology; aged care; district nursing and a nurse-led RDNS primary health care clinic, and over 15 years in hospice and community palliative care.
Jane Homberger
Jane Homberger is the current chief executive officer of successful skin cancer assessment business, Skin Smart Australia, which she founded in 2011. With a background in dermatoscopy nursing and post graduate qualifications in General Practice Nursing from Edith Cowan University, Jane’s passion for nursing assessment and preventative medicine at a community level, lead her to discover and develop an interest in skin cancer medicine. For more than 12 years, Jane has devoted her professional time and efforts to the development of skin cancer assessment and education.
Skin Smart Australia was the first and is the country’s leading provider of corporate skin cancer assessment and education services, conducting over 25,000 skin checks annually to time-poor working Australians across all eight states and territories. Jane has driven Skin Smart Australia to great success with her passion, expertise and extensive experience, navigating the company to a win at the 2015 Telstra Business Awards.
With an employee base of over 45 accomplished individuals throughout Australia, the company continues to grow exponentially. Jane’s firm focus on professional development and industry best practice, means that Skin Smart Australia’s dermatoscopists are at the forefront of skin cancer detection, education and prevention with the best available skills and knowledge in the field.
Thanks to Jane’s dedication and commitment into building Skin Smart Australia from the ground up, she has proudly forged the way for skin cancer assessments to become a regular and valued workplace health and wellness initiative.
In addition to the company’s roaming corporate skin assessment service, Jane also runs and owns an independent mole mapping business out of a large Victorian GP clinic. This new concept allows GPs to focus on the treatment of skin cancers, while Jane and her team of experienced melanographers conduct the skin lesion imaging service. The interaction with local GPs, practice managers and their network of patients supports Jane’s focus on community contribution.
This experience at a community level has been instrumental in partnering with the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre, UniSA in undertaking research to understand the benefits of community event-based skin cancer “pop-up” clinics for regional parts of South Australia and their potential to train and support local nurses to deliver skin checks to their community. This research is known as Project Check Mate.
Kate Kennedy
Kate is currently working as a research assistant with the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre in the University of South Australia’s Clinical and Health Sciences Unit. Her current role is Research Projects Coordinator, in which she assist in the development of processes and protocols across projects, to ensure consistency in approach and deliverables.
Kate has been working in research teams across Allied Health and Nursing and Midwifery at the University of South Australia since 2011, on a range of topics including falls, healthy aging, functional decline, dementia, wound care and prevention, allied health initiatives, midwifery, the role of compassion and burnout, workforce planning and program evaluations. Kate has an interest in co-design, person-centred care, and the translation of the evidence base into regular practice.
Her current work is focussed on dementia care, specifically on supporting nursing and other healthcare staff in aged care facilities in delivering safe, effective and evidence-based care for those experiencing changed behaviours of dementia.
Bryan Macdonald
Bryan is a senior nurse informatician that has worked in the healthcare industry for over 25 years. He has clinical experience in the acute and community health care setting, starting in South Australia. He has led the implementation of digital solutions in the public and private sector.
He has held executive roles in the digital health software industry for over 13 years and has a strong commitment to clinical standards and evidence-based care using digital technology. He provides consulting with healthcare organisations and software vendors to develop maturity in digital transformation through developing digital health strategies, development of organisational digital programs and digital system procurement.
He has developed and lectures in digital health both at an undergraduate and postgraduate level for tertiary institutions such as Flinders University, University of Adelaide and RMIT.
He has a Bachelor of Nursing, Master of Information Technology and expected to complete his Juris Doctor at the end of this year.
Associate Professor Adam Montagu
Associate Professor Adam Montagu is the Director of Adelaide Health Simulation (AHS) at The University of Adelaide. AHS provides simulation teaching and assessment to students of nursing, medicine, health science, dentistry, allied health and psychology.
Adam works with organisations locally, nationally and internationally to advocate for patient safety improvements through delivery of high quality simulation based education (SBE).
Adams clinical experience is predominantly in adult emergency departments where he held senior clinical leadership positions as a Registered Nurse. He is a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator and an Education Specialist with the Adelaide Education Academy. Under his leadership, Adelaide Health Simulation achieved accreditation in teaching and education with the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. At the time of writing, Adelaide Health Simulation is the only such facility to hold this accreditation in Australia.
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Greg Sharplin
Greg Sharplin is the Research and Strategy Manager of the Rosemary Bryant AO Research Centre and a Senior Research Fellow in UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences.
Greg has a Masters in Science (Epidemiology) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Masters in Psychology (Organisational and Human Factors) from the University of Adelaide.
Greg’s role is to oversee the business and research development of the RBRC. This includes leading the development, implementation and evaluation of the RBRC five year Strategic Plan; fostering national and international links and strategic relationships with relevant research institutions, universities and community bodies; and leading research activities associated with the RBRC’s research program.
Greg’s primary research focus is in investigating the working environment and conditions for healthcare workers and how these factors affect occupational performance and wellbeing metrics like productivity, quality, safety, engagement, job strain and burnout. Greg also has extensive experience in health service and program evaluations across healthcare.
Kaurna Elder Uncle Tamaru
Kaurna Elder who teaches language from ELC to Labour Party.