Dr Nayana Parange is Professor of Medical sonography and Professorial Lead in UniSA Allied Health and Human Performance. She is an ultrasound educator and researcher and passionate about teaching and learning. She currently leads the portfolio of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Allied Health and Human Performance.
Her academic and professional background includes qualifications in medicine, specialist training in obstetrics and Gynaecology, ultrasound and education.She has an extensive clinical and teaching background, is active in teaching, research, industry and community engagement and her career spans over thirty years. She has over 20 years of clinical ultrasound experience in diverse settings, ranging from primary health care to tertiary maternal fetal medicine setting. Her PhD was in maternal-fetal medicine, specifically in fetal cardiac ultrasound in pregnancies with adverse outcomes. Her area of clinical expertise are OB GYN ultrasound and fetal echocardiography.
She has extensive experience in academic leadership and governance, stakeholder engagement, and strategic planning and operations within complex delivery models, having held a range of appointments to several national and international committees in ultrasound.
Some of her current external appointments in the profession include membership of the International Asia-Pacific Simulation Alliance, International Ultrasound Outreach Committee Steering group invited member through International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (ISUOG), Chair of the Australian Ultrasound Outreach committee through Australasian Society of Ultrasound in Medicine(ASUM), nominated member for Assessors pool for external review and accreditation of postgraduate sonography programs through the Australasian Sonographer Accreditation Registry (ASAR), Chair of the Special Interest Group Committee member for Obstetric and Gynaecologic Ultrasound through the Australian Sonographer Association (ASA) and the Obstetric and Gynaecologic ultrasound education advisor for the Education Advisory Committee ASA.
She has been the Associate Dean for Online education in the Division of Health Sciences. As Associate Dean, Dr Parange provided academic leadership in the Division and UniSA Online, facilitating the digital transformation of academic programs, driving curriculum development for UnISA Online programs, promoting innovative online teaching approaches and contributing to establishing an exceptional educational and student experience for online students.
Dr Parange’s research and scholarship focuses on education, spanning multiple aspects of education. She is passionate about improving pregnancy outcomes globally and strongly feels that that every mother and baby counts. She has devoted her career striving towards this goal via clinical work, research, scholarship and community service. She continues to educate, enable and empower health professionals by upskilling them in point-of-care antenatal ultrasound to make a difference to patient care in socially, economically and geographically disadvantaged areas that have limited or no access to these life-saving services which can identify life threatening problems in the mother and unborn baby. Her work in the community includes examining barriers and challenges in access to these life saving services, development and delivery of antenatal ultrasound education of GPs and midwives serving in remote areas to enable provision of these services, and evaluation of impact of this antenatal education and provision of these services on clinical practice and patient outcomes in remote communities. Her work in tertiary education over the last ten years includes improving student engagement and learning in postgraduate ultrasound online environment to enable excellent patient care, and more recently in UniSA Online Health degrees as well, involving technology assisted teaching, online learning pedagogy, interprofessional learning and learning in simulated environments to enable students to be prepared for the workforce. She is often invited as a plenary speaker to discuss and present her work in national and international conferences.
Dr Parange loves teaching, and her engagement with students is collegial, student centred, and focused on their contribution and performance beyond the classroom. For example, assignments in her course are deliberately designed to enable students to confidently present their submission as academic papers to peer reviewed international journals or posters in international conferences. Dr Parange’s outstanding contributions to ultrasound education in the postgraduate environment, to the ultrasound profession as well as her innovative ultrasound outreach education efforts for sustainability of essential services in remote communities globally have led to significant national and international recognition and resulted in several prestigious awards including ASA Researcher of the Year 2023, a Fellow of International Association of Medical Education (FAMEE), Europe 2019, Senior Fellowship in 2018 from Advance HE (HEA, UK), 2018, Inaugural ASA Fellowship where she was one of 13 people across Australia and New Zealand to win this Fellowship, SA Governor’s multicultural volunteering award, 2016 Australian Govt teaching citation award for university teaching from the Department of Education and Teaching, the 2016 international Effective Practice award from the Online Learning Consortium USA, 2016 national diversity award from the Australian Centre for Leadership for Women (ACLW),  2015 ASUM Award of Excellence for service to rural and remote ultrasound, 2015 Women in Innovation (Winnovation) Award South Australia where she was one among 8 women across South Australia at that time. She has been awarded several teaching awards in UniSA as well, including the ‘Student-nominated best digital educator’ from the UniSA Division of Health Sciences in 2016 and the 2015 Unisa Citation for outstanding contributions to Digital learning.
Dr Parange is available for expert consultancy in development, assessment and evaluation of educational programs including those in ultrasound ( point of care ultrasound as well as advanced ob gyn ultrasound), scholarship of learning and teaching as well as in online education.
Please contact her via email: Nayana.Parange@unisa.edu.au