Research, Teaching & Learning

Chris Roberts
MBChB MRCGP MMedSci PhD
Associate Professor, Director and Associate Dean of Education


Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Associate Professor Chris Roberts PhD is a medical educator of international reputation. His current role is Director of the Centre of Innovation in Professional Health Education and Research (CIPHER) at the University of Sydney, one of the most significant collections of medical and health educational expertise in Australia. His particular research interests are the assessment of clinical performance, professionalism and clinical competence. He has undertaken consultancy on assessment in Australia, UK, Ireland, Canada, and the Middle East. He has published several articles on assessment in peer reviewed international journals. In the UK he was responsible for quality assurance of all high stakes summative assessments at the University of Sheffield. Whilst there he worked collaboratively with the team which has gone on to produce a major contribution to the international literature on work-based assessment. At the University of Sydney he has a major role in revising the Faculty of Medicine’s assessment strategy. This includes the establishing on the Mini-Cex as a summative assessment of clinical competence.

Tim Shaw
BSc (Hons) PhD
Associate Professor, Deputy Director, and Director Workforce Development


Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone +61 2 9351 5181
Fax +61 2 9351 6646

Tim Shaw is an Associate Professor of Health Workforce Education and Director of program development in the Centre for Innovation in Professional Health Education and Research (CIPHER) at The University of Sydney. He specialises in the development, management and evaluation of large innovative health-based educational projects. He holds a PhD in biomedical sciences.

Recent projects that have been managed by CIPHE include the review of Cancer Care CPD for the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, development of the National Patient Safety Education Framework for the Australian Council for Quality in Health Care, the development of Basic and Advanced Surgical Training online for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Pharmacotherapy Accreditation training for NSW Health, Online Medication Management Review Training for the Pharmacy Guild and Junior Medical Officers online modules in appropriate use of blood products for the Northern Centre for Health Improvement.

Jill Thistlethwaite
BSc MBBS PhD MMEd FRCGP FRACGP DRCOG
Associate Professor and Director, Research & Teaching




Room 210, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9036 7853
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Dr Jill Thistlethwaite is a medical educator and general practitioner. She trained in the United Kingdom and received her PhD in medical education from the University of Maastricht. Her interests are consultation/communication skills training and assessment, shared decision making, professionalism, portfolio-based assessment and interprofessional learning. She still practises as a GP for 2 sessions a week.

Dr Thistlethwaite chairs the Prevocational Education Sub-Committee of the NSC Education Committee of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She is on the board of InterEd, an international organization for promoting and evaluating interprofessional education. She is associate editor of the Journal of Interprofessional Care and on the editorial advisory board of the Clinical Teacher and Work Based Learning in Primary Care.

She has published in a variety of education and clinical journals and is co-author of three books to be published in 2006: on consultation skills (for the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK), professionalism and working with simulated patients.

Merrilyn Walton
BA BSW MSW PhD
Associate Professor and Director, Patient Safety




Room 209, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9351 3678
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Associate Professor Walton teaches medical students and clinicians about ethical practice, quality and safety.

Her particular interests include:

• Educating health care workers about ethical practice and patient safety,
• Enhancing the training environment for medical students and doctors,
• Advocating for patients to be fully engaged in health care at every level.

Merrilyn was the founding Commissioner for the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (1993-2000) and has convened many Government Inquiries. She has been published widely in Australian and international health, medical and law journals on issues relating to regulation, ethical practice, standards of care, and patient safety. She was the Director and author of the National Patient Safety Education Framework.

She is the author of 3 books, the latest being Safety and ethics in Health Care with co authors Professors Bill Runciman and Alan Merry, published by Ashgate Publishers (2007). She has contributed chapters to 14 books.

She is a member/director on many committees and boards including the NSW Institute for Medical Education and Training as member of the NSW Ministerial Advisory Committee and Management committee, Chair of the Prevocational Council (IMET), Clinical Ethics Committee at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, The Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the NSW Health Quest Appeals Committee and Faculty Member of the NSW Clinical Practice Improvement Program. She is also a member of the review committee for the University Review of Social Sciences, and Chairs the judging panel for the NSW Baxter health Awards.

Associate Professor Charlotte Rees
BSc (Hons) MEd PhD CPsychol
Director, Medical Education




Room 211, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9351 2814
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Charlotte is a psychologist and educationalist by background. She received her degrees from the Universities of Liverpool, Exeter and Sheffield in the UK. She has recently joined CIPHER (February 2007), before which she was Senior Lecturer in Medical Education at the Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, UK. She joined Peninsula in March 2002 as the Foundation Lead for three longitudinal themes of the new undergraduate medical curriculum: Human Sciences, Communication Skills and Personal and Professional Development. Her major responsibilities within this leadership role included curriculum development, implementation and evaluation, faculty development and management, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and medical education research. In preparation for the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008, Charlotte’s job description at Peninsula Medical School changed radically in March 2005, whereby her primarily role was medical education research and evaluation. Her major research interests focus on the development of professionalism and professional behaviours in medical students and are underpinned largely by social cognition theory. She has expertise as a qualitative and quantitative researcher and has published widely on topics such as patient education in oncology, communication skills learning, professionalism assessment and service user involvement in medical education, with over 40 peer-reviewed journal publications.

Patricia M. Lyon
B.A., M.Ed., Ph.D
Senior Lecturer (Research and Development)
plyon@med.usyd.edu.au



Room 208, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9351 2442
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Tricia is a Senior Lecturer with CIPHER. Her main roles are those of academic developer and educational researcher. She leads an academic team responsible for the planning, coordination and development of the Postgraduate Program in Medical Education. This program is designed for medical educators who wish to further develop their skills in the scholarship of teaching and learning in medicine.

Tricia is also coordinating a continuing professional development initiative designed around teaching skills for best practice for clinicians in the clinical schools. Her interest is in the area of clinical teaching within the interpretive research tradition. In her Ph.D. in surgical education she developed a model of teaching and learning in the operating theatre. More recent research includes an examination of the medical students’ experience of learning in the rural clinical setting.

Kirsty Foster
Senior Lecturer in Medical Education and PhD Student


Room 221, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9036 7211
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Kirsty is based at the Northern Clinical School, Royal North Shore Hospital and works in the CIPHER office on a part time basis.

Peter Davy
B.Ed (Hons)
Lecturer in Medical Education (Assessment)
pdavy@med.usyd.edu.au




Room 206, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9351 4649
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Peter Davy is a Lecturer in Medical Education in CIPHER. He has an extensive career in education having worked previously as an educational researcher and developer, Curriculum Manager and Manager, Statistics Unit in the NSW Department of Education and Training prior to his appointment at this University.

Peter’s principal field of interest is student assessment in medical education. He has teaching responsibilities in the Master of Medical Education program coordinating the semester long module in the Assessment of Competence and Performance in Medicine.

Peter has conducted dozens of professional development and consultancy workshops and seminars on student assessment both nationally and internationally. He is also currently Stage 1 Sub Dean and Stage 2 Assessment Coordinator in the University of Sydney Medical Program (USydMP).

Rola Ajjawi
BAppSci (Physiotherapy) Hons PhD
Lecturer
rajjawi@med.usyd.edu.au



Room 216C, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9036 7208
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Rola Ajjawi is an Associate Lecturer in Medical Education at CIPHER. Her work involves curriculum evaluation and design and conducting educational research. In her PhD research she explored how experienced practitioners learn to reason and learn to communicate their reasoning in professional practice.

Rola’s research interests include: professionalism, workplace learning, and assessing and promoting clinical reasoning ability.

Imogene Rothnie
B.A., B. Sci., Post Grad Dip (Psych)

Associate Lecturer (Assessment)
irothnie@med.usyd.edu.au

Room 206, Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Phone: +61 2 9351 4902
Fax: +61 2 9351 6646

Associate Lecturer Imogene Rothnie works in the development of medical education assessment strategies and educational evaluation. Imogene is also involved with teaching in the Postgraduate Program in Medical Education, particularly in the areas of design and analysis of assessment instruments and program evaluation.

Imogene’s background is in educational psychology with a particular interest in the psychometrics of student assessment and approaches to the evaluation of medical education innovations, particularly in IT. Her research interests include the use of alternate measurement theories in standard setting and the use of information technology in the design and delivery of medical education curriculum resources and assessment.