David de Kretser Medal and Lifetime Achievement Medal awarded for 2023
Emeritus Professor Debra Griffiths (left) and Professor Jane Visvader (right) with Executive Dean Professor Christina Mitchell AO.
An educator and leader with combined clinical and legal expertise and an award-winning breast cancer researcher have been awarded the faculty’s highest honour medals for 2023.
Emeritus Professor Debra Griffiths and Professor Jane Visvader received their awards at a ceremony held at the Chancellory at Monash University’s Clayton campus last night. The evening was hosted by Executive Dean Professor Christina Mitchell AO and attended by special guests.
The David de Kretser Medal celebrates the exceptional contribution of a staff member to any area of the faculty’s operation over a significant period of their working life. The Lifetime Achievement Medal recognises a person who has made an outstanding contribution, nationally and internationally, to human health and wellbeing. The faculty established the awards in 2006 and bestows them annually.
This year, Professor Debra Griffiths was awarded the David de Kretser Medal in recognition of her outstanding contributions to Monash Nursing and Midwifery over three decades. She is a registered nurse, midwife and lawyer with many years of clinical experience in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is a leader and innovator with a passion for educating health professionals in the law and clinical practice.
Professor Griffiths was Head of Monash Nursing and Midwifery from 2015-2022, and during her tenure, the discipline of nursing at Monash rose to first in Victoria and fifth globally in the prestigious ShanghaiRankings Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS).
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Victorian lockdowns, her leadership ensured that over 1700 Monash nursing and midwifery students progressed safely through their undergraduate and postgraduate courses, shoring up the pipeline of Registered and Advanced Practice Nurses needed in Victoria's healthcare system.
Professor Griffiths also led the Victorian Department of Health-funded, infection control and PPE training program for residential aged-care workers during the pandemic, at a time when residential aged care residents were extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. Over a nine-month period, the team delivered 324 training sessions to 3588 participants from 241 individual residential aged care facilities in metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria, improving safety, building confidence and supporting all levels of staff to work safely under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Professor Griffith is also a sought-after specialist in medical-legal education. She has delivered lectures and seminars to a wide range of healthcare practitioners and students, at state, national and international levels. Her extensive clinical background enables an educational focus on understanding key legal principles and how they may influence professional practice to the benefit of both the patient and health practitioner.
Professor Griffith has attracted over
$7 million in research funding across her career, with projects focused on clinical practice, such as the Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) for international registered and enrolled nurses for the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, identifying factors influencing occupational violence in healthcare, examining end of life decision-making; highlighting gaps in the documentation and subsequent communication of elderly residents transferred to hospital; the establishment and evaluation of an interprofessional simulation laboratory and associated educational strategies; and national nursing standards.
Professor Griffiths’s research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and she jointly authored Essentials of Law for Health Professionals, a publication widely utilised in Australia across two decades and several editions, and favourably reviewed by The Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG regarding its quality and contribution to medico-legal education.
Continually committed to the quality of professional practice, Professor Griffiths was also appointed an inaugural Director of the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria in 2006. The service provides free, independent and confidential assistance to Victorian nurses, midwives and students experiencing substance misuse, mental health concerns, family violence and other issues affecting health and wellbeing. Professor Griffiths also contributes to health care practice as an expert witness in court, when requested.
Lifetime Achievement Medal recipient Professor Jane Visvader is a leading Australian molecular and cellular biologist and the Joint Head of the Breast Cancer Laboratory and the Division of Cancer Biology and Stem Cells at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). She also holds a professorial appointment at the University of Melbourne.
Professor Visvader’s research focuses on the role of stem cell biology in breast development and cancer, and her laboratory has a long-standing interest in the stem cell differentiation hierarchy, identifying molecular regulators of normal development and deciphering mechanisms that lead to breast cancer. She completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide and held postdoctoral positions at the Salk Institute, San Diego and the Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1998, she was appointed as a Laboratory Head at WEHI to lead studies on breast development and cancer.
Professor Visvader has made seminal contributions to the fields of mammary biology and breast cancer. In 2006, her team achieved the isolation of the stem cell that generates the entire breast, a significant breakthrough published in the prestigious journal Nature. This work and her subsequent identification of master regulators of mammary gland development and cells of origin of cancer have altered understanding of breast cancer, and pioneered a new field of research – breast stem cell biology. Collectively, these findings have laid a framework for translating basic discoveries into clinical practice, aiming for improved breast cancer outcomes for women in the future.
Emeritus Professor Debra Griffiths with Nursing and Midwifery staff.
Professor Visvader has received numerous scientific awards including the Royal Society of Victoria Medal for Excellence in Scientific Research in 2014, the Lemberg Medal in 2016, the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Elizabeth Blackburn Biomedical Award in 2016, the Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation in 2017 and the Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in 2019. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2012, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016, the Royal Society in 2020 and the American Association for Cancer Research in 2022.
Executive Dean of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Professor Christina Mitchell AO warmly congratulated both recipients. “It’s my great pleasure to award Professor Griffiths and Professor Visvader these Faculty Medals,” she said. “Professor Griffith has made lasting contributions to Monash Nursing and Midwifery and the wider community through her leadership, advocacy for the nursing profession, and the innovative application of both her clinical and legal expertise. Professor Visvader’s discoveries in stem cell biology have made a profound impact on our understanding of breast development and cancer, leading to the potential to discover new prevention and treatment strategies. We’re very pleased to recognise and celebrate their outstanding careers of excellence and impact.”
Find out more about the David De Kretser Medal and Lifetime Achievement Medals.
About Monash University
Monash University is Australia’s largest university with more than 80,000 students. In the 60 years since its foundation, it has developed a reputation for world-leading high-impact research, quality teaching, and inspiring innovation.
With four campuses in Australia and a presence in Malaysia, China, India, Indonesia and Italy, it is one of the most internationalised Australian universities.
As a leading international medical research university with the largest medical faculty in Australia and integration with leading Australian teaching hospitals, we consistently rank in the top 50 universities worldwide for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences.
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