Dr Rebecca Sharp is a Senior Lecturer in Nursing with a balanced teaching and research position. Dr Sharp’s research focusses on improving the safety and experience of health care for people with health conditions such as cancer. Dr Sharp has more than 10 years’ experience in mixed methods research, including qualitative research into the health consumer experience of care with both adults and children and quantitative research to identify predictors of adverse events in healthcare. This has included funded research that interrogated data from 4 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand to quantify minimum vein sizes to reduce vascular access device thrombosis.  
 
Dr Sharp regularly collaborates with clinicians in hospital and home-based settings to produce research that has informed international vascular access device clinical guidelines, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘Guidelines for the prevention of bloodstream infections’ and the Infusion Nurses Society (USA) ‘Infusion Therapy Standards of Practice’ which are translated into eight languages and used to guide practice globally. Dr Sharp has led co-design projects in collaboration with health consumers and clinicians to improve vascular access device education and supports for people living at home with a vascular access device.
 
Dr Sharp is the past president of the national association for vascular access clinicians (Australian Vascular Access Society) and has recently joined an international task force to develop the International Home-Based Nursing Scope of Practice and Standards, a collaboration between the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the International Home Care Nurses Organisation (IHCNO).
 
Dr Sharp is an experienced Course Coordinator leading large cohorts of staff and students across multiple campuses. She embeds contemporary research into learning activities, including writing the vascular access device management guidelines for the School of Nursing and Midwifery’s simulated hospital to ensure they reflected the latest evidence. Recently, Dr Sharp collaborated with simulation leads to develop learning materials that integrate evidence-based clinical information with stories from people living with vascular access devices, drawn from qualitative research she led at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to foster nurse student understanding. 
 
If you are interested in research collaboration or undertaking a research degree, please feel free to contact me.