Robin Ray

Key areas of professional expertise

• Broad expertise in qualitative and mixed methods research collaboration and supervision for Honours, Masters and PhD students.
• Extensive experience in conducting research
• High level skills in research in practice in community palliative care and MND
• Extensive experience in teaching, research and practice in ethics, professionalism, health professional education and global health
• Managerial expertise in course administration

Research focus

My research is focused on achieving positive outcomes for patients and their families in regional and rural Australia with a two-fold focus living with life-limiting illness and workforce recruitment and retention.

I provide research mentorship and advice for busy clinicians engaging in practice based research across a number of disciplines. My aim is to build capacity for evidence-based practice providing research methods education, assistance with research design and minor projects, as well as opportunities for co-supervision of higher degree candidates.

Currently supported clinician research spans neonatology, pain management, end of life decision making including advance care plans, and provision of care in community contexts.

Living with life-limiting illness

I use qualitative methods to explore the experiences of patients and family caregivers living with progressive neurological disease, most commonly motor neurone disease (MND).

My application of ecomapping as a data gathering tool captured the dynamic changes in support networks available to caregivers, challenging the government’s notion that support is readily available given the healthy nature of social capital in Australia. My work with caregivers of individuals living with MND has redefined emotional labour as it pertains to caregivers and developed the concept of socio-connective trust to describe the reflexive, shifting relationships between caregivers and the individual being cared for, caregivers and expert systems, and caregivers and social networks.

I have also worked in collaboration with palliative care consultants to assess the need for ongoing education across regional health services and develop and evaluate regular videoconferencing education sessions.

Workforce recruitment and retention

In collaboration with others, I have conducted longitudinal mixed methods and qualitative studies with medical students and junior doctors concerning factors that support and enhance rural medical practice. Beginning students from rural and remote backgrounds have a broader understanding of rural practice that is embedded in community relationships, whereas urban origin students tend to be more individually orientated in their approach to rural practice. Identified barriers to rural practice fluctuate across years of medical training and can be mitigated in part, through improved supervision and engagement with effective role models in the teaching and clinical areas.