Pieta Shakes

Projects

1

Publications

10

Awards

3


Contact Details

Biography

Pieta Shakes is overly enthusiastic about patient experience and person-centred care within our fast-paced systems and society. After twelve years of clinical mental health roles, Pieta transitioned into academia with a professional goal to improve equity, diversity and the translation of evidence into practice. Pieta's research is focused on the psychosocial aspects of prenatal diagnosis - experiences, psychosocial outcomes and care of parents who receive unexpected news about the health, development or genetics of their unborn baby. As an extension of this, Pieta also explores the way research and clinical services engage, partner with, and support people with lived experience in a way that moves beyond tokenism. Pieta has authored research publications exploring maternal experiences, communication in prenatal care, and structural/workforce challenges to holistic care for families who receive a prenatal diagnosis and her human-centred approach to her work is informed by both professional expertise and lived experience.

Pieta has submitted her PhD thesis for examination and has been fortunate enough to collaborate on and lead other research projects that utilised a range of methodologies and methods. Current research projects seek to;

- coproduce training resources with parents who received a fetal anomaly diagnosis (Principal Investigator)
- explore the meaning of a fetal diagnosis for an Aboriginal community (co-Principal Investigator)
- explore experiences and preferences for care related to a termination for medical reasons (Associate Investigator)
- co-design a digital tool to better equip parents to receive balanced, strengths-based information about their child informed by the lived experiences of other families (
Associate Investigator)
- investigate causes and potential treatments for perinatal intrusions (Consumer Advisor). 

Pieta has postgraduate qualifications in mental health nursing, child and adolescent mental health, diagnostic genomics and higher education innovative teaching and learning and is credentialed with CHIA. She is the founder and Executive Director of Through the Unexpected, co-Chair of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand Perinatal Ethics Committee. With a focus on research translation and implementation, Pieta frequently offers consultation to services wishing to improve care for parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis, prepares parliamentary submissions, collaborates on guidelines and speaks at events. 

As a full-time Teaching and Research Academic, Pieta manages the research portfolio of subjects within the Master of Nursing, and Effective Clinical Governance. Alongside this work, Pieta collaboratively developed a national microcredential program related to digital health. She is currently leading a project to co-design the first Australian multidisciplinary microcredential program on the psychosocial aspects of fetal diagnosis, which builds upon transformative, constructivist and critical learning theories and aligns with the Australian Microcredentials Framework. 

Research

Research Interests

Patient experience, genomics and nursing, prenatal screening and diagnosis, online education, innovative teaching, student-centred teaching, equity and diversity in nursing, neurodevelopmental differences, hermeneutic phenomenology, discourse analysis, agenesis of the corpus callosum, rare conditions and mental health

Projects

Teaching

Taught Modules

Activities

Associations
Awards
Employment

Output

Turbitt, Erin; Callinan, Elizabeth; Shakes, Pieta; McEwen, Alison; Amor, David J. (2024) 'Fostering . Current , 11 :21...
Journal Publication Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Cashin, Andrew; Hurley, John (2023) 'Threat and adaptation: The maternal lived experi. Social Science and Medicine, 339 . [DOI] ...
Journal Publication Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Cashin, Andrew (2021) 'Mental health nursing and the prenatal diagnosis of a congenit. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 28 (2):271-277. [DOI] ...
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Johnson, Judith; Arezina, Jane; Tomlin, Liz; Alt, Siobhan; Arnold, Jon; Bailey, Sarah; Beety, Hannah...
Journal Publication Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Cashin, Andrew (2020) 'An Analysis of Twitter Discourse Regarding Identifying Languag. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 41 (3):221-228. [DOI] ...
Journal Publication Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Cashin, Andrew; Hurley, John (2020) 'Scoping Review of the Prenatal Diagnosis of Agen. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal, 49 (5):423-436. [DOI] ...
Journal Publication Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Cashin, Andrew (2019) 'Identifying language for people on the autism spectrum: a scop. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 40 (4):317-325. [DOI] ...
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Ahern, Tracey; Shakes, Pieta; Gooding, Tracey (2024) 'Nurses develop Microcredential for digital hea Australian Nursing Journal, 28 (3) :54-55. ...
Journal Contribution ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Ahern, Tracey; Gooding, Tracey (2023) 'Nurturing a systems approach to quality improv JBI Evidence Implementation eBulletin, 4 . ...
Journal Contribution ResearchOnline@JCU
Shakes, Pieta; Deslandes, Alison (2021) 'The challenges for patients and sonographers when complex o Sonography, 8 (2) :65-70. [DOI] ...
Journal Contribution Open Access ResearchOnline@JCU