Post-doctoral profiles
Dr Bethany CarrResearch Fellow
have been at Monash University School of Nursing and Midwifery since 2016 as a midwifery lecturer, and was appointed to Research Fellow in 2025. Prior to coming to Monash University, I worked clinically as a midwife (2009 – 2019) as well as research midwife.
I completed my PhD (Midwifery) at Monash University in 2025. My thesis focused on the development of a prediction model for postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) using a Bayesian Network which I designed with input from maternity clinicians and perspectives from women on what they want to know about risk of PPH.
I am involved in professional organisations, and am currently a member of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) policy and endorsement committee, reviewing national perinatal guidelines.
What drew you to research? The first research I was ever involved in started as questioning a clinical guideline at work, because it didn’t have sufficient evidence to support the recommendations! I like to make sure that the care we provide as midwives, and the advice and recommendations we make to women are based on the best available evidence.
Tell us about your current projects and areas of research Currently in my role I am involved in projects either as a Research Fellow for Professor Jenny Gamble and/or as a supervisor for doctoral students. They focus on some current issues in maternity care and the midwifery profession.
I am supervising students doing projects on moral distress and burnout for midwives and the impact of exposure to physiological birth for midwives. I am working on a project that is a co-design of maternity educational resources in conjunction with refugee and asylum-seeking women, and a project focusing on the current issue of alarmingly high caesarean section rates, starting with a systematic review on maternal preference for caesarean section. I am continuing some of the work from my PhD, looking at exploring using other data in the model I developed to predict PPH.
What are your career goals? I want to improve outcomes for women by reducing maternal morbidity associated with unnecessary medical interventions. As a new early career researcher, I am aiming to work towards leading innovative projects in this area and successfully obtain funding. I am also committed to mentoring and supervising graduate midwifery students and I am working towards becoming an accredited supervisor.
Dr Van NguyenResearch Fellow
I am a health professions education researcher with expertise in instrument development, instrument validation, realist methodologies and mixed-methods. With a background in nursing, I am passionate about creating and using quality evidence to support health professions in their transition to teaching in both academic and clinical settings. This special interest stems from her belief that teaching requires a unique skillset, and that, preparing those in teaching roles in health professions curriculum needs to be as evidence-based as it is always emphasised in healthcare practice. My interest also expands to healthcare workforce research with an ultimately aim to enhance the recruitment and retention of the healthcare workforce in nursing, midwifery and allied health.
Shared among multiple collaborative projects of varied scopes, topics and settings that I have led, coordinated, supervised and/or collaborated with multidisciplinary colleagues in Australia, the United Kingdom, Vietnam (and more!) is the common value of sustainability: sustaining high-calibre teaching workforce will contribute to and sustain quality health professions education; and retaining qualified healthcare professionals will ensure a thriving workforce to take care of individuals and communities. One of my career highlights is receiving the Excellence in Educational Research award by Sigma Theta Tau’s International for developing and validating the Clinical Nurse Educator Skill Acquisition Assessment (CNESAA) which until now has been applied in various countries as part of organisational formal support programs to ensure clinical nurse educators are well equipped, confident and thriving in their teaching role.
I also enjoy teaching in the education stream of the Master of Advanced Nursing, and supervising Honours, Masters and PhD students.To me this is such a privilege to be part of students’ learning journeys, and especially to witness their transformation to become outstanding educators and aspiring researchers.
What drew you to research?My own professional experience and reflexivity.
Tell us about your current projects and areas of research I have a few major projects at the moment including three instrument development projects (two education focus and one clinical focus) that are all at data collection phase. I hold a special interest for this methodology because survey is a very common research method. Survey serves as a system of measure and therefore we need a rigorous system of measures to ensure the accuracy of measurement in order to inform policy, education and practice changes.
In reality, many survey tools in the literature of health professions education are unfortunately often sub-optimally developed and validated in part due to its intensive resource requirement. I am thankful for the support of our Monash Nursing and Midwifery and Monash Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences to allow me to lead and to collaborate with my colleagues in these rigorous projects.
What are your career goals?To use evidence-based strategies to ensure health professionals successfully transition to teaching roles. One clinical educator at a time. One academic at a time.