Mrs Joyce McSwan

Gold Coast Primary Health Network
Persistent Pain Program QLD and
PainWISE

Tel: 0412 327 795
Fax: 07 3539 9801

BPharm FPS Cert IV TAE

Joyce is a multi-award winning clinical pharmacist and educator within the field of pain management.  She is the Clinical Director of the Gold Coast Primary Health Network ‘Turning Pain into Gain’ program and Managing Director of PainWISE.  Her contributions in the field of persistent pain has been recognised through awards and collaborative industry partnerships with Griffith University, Bond University, Painaustralia, Australian Pain Society, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and the Pain Management Research Institute. In 2021, Joyce was appointed the Principal Continuing Professional Development Director of the Australian Health Practitioners Advisory Solutions. She was also awarded her Fellowship by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia in 2021. Her expertise lies in innovative health pathway design, piloting and implementing models of care within the primary care setting utilising mixed funding models to optimise pain management and chronic disease management.

Ms Bernadette Smith

Psychology Plus (Tas) Pty Ltd
South Burnie TAS 7320

Tel: 03 6431 9959
Fax: 03 6431 9950

BA(Hons) GradDipPsychEd GradDipTeachLearnHealth Prof DipClinHyp(Med) MScMed(Pain Management) MAPS

Graduating from UTAS in 1992 Bernadette spent the next 10 years working as a Psychologist for Community Mental Health Services in Tasmania (Child & Adolescent/Adult Community).  Bernadette has also worked for UTAS as honorary clinical lecturer with the School of Psychology and Rural Clinical School at the Cradle Coast Campus.
Bernadette moved into private practice (Psychology Plus) in 2003 where she developed a special interest in the treatment of chronic pain and health education.  In 2016, Bernadette completed her Master of Science in Medicine (Pain Management) through the University of Sydney.  Aside from consulting in private practice Bernadette co-facilitates a federally funded Group Pain Management Program (OPAL) on the North West Coast of Tasmania and has done so for the past 8 years.  Bernadette is also co-director of Pain Solutions a multi-disciplinary team working with compensable patients suffering chronic pain.
Bernadette is a big supporter of the Pain Revolution; she rode for the first time in 2018 and is currently a mentor for local pain educators through the local pain education program. 

Mrs Dinah Spratt

Physiotas Physiotherapy
Shearwater TAS 7307

Tel: 03 6428 7500
Fax: 03 6424 7811

GradDipPhys MScMed (Pain Management)

Dinah moved with her family to Tasmania from the UK in 2006 and has been working in an expanding private physiotherapy practice on the north-west coast since then. She has also worked in an advanced scope role for an orthopaedic spinal surgeon in northern Tasmania for 6 years, assisting in both the diagnosis and management of spinal patients conservatively and pre and post operatively. Dinah has a special interest in the management of spinal and chronic pain conditions, as well as educating both patients and allied health professionals on chronic pain and its biopsychosocial influences. Dinah has completed a MSc in Medicine on Pain Management at the University of Sydney. She gives regular talks entitled ‘Chronic pain from a biopsychosocial perspective’ for patients and is involved in presenting talks to GPs and also to members of her local community on this subject.

Dr Laura Prendergast

Pain Service
Northern Health
Broadmeadows VIC 3047

Tel: 03 8345 5166 - work days Monday & Thursday
Fax: N/A

B.A., GDip Psych., DPsych (Health)

Dr Laura Prendergast is a Senior Psychologist at the Northern Health Pain Service in Melbourne, Victoria, where she delivers group programs and provides assessment and individual treatment to clients with persistent pain. She also consults on the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) Clinical Panel, reviewing and providing advice for psychologists treating people who have been touched by road trauma. She is passionate about multidisciplinary pain management and enjoys the challenge of improving educational resources for people with pain in her clinical practice. Laura is a strong advocate for Health Psychology and its focus on prevention and population level interventions in addition to targeted clinical work.

Laura served as the Victorian Director on the board of the Australian Pain Society from 2017 to 2022 and was appointed Treasurer in 2022.

Dr Andrew Watson

Calvary Hospital
Canberra ACT 2617

Tel: 02 6201 6352
Fax: N/A

BHB MBChB FRACGP DRACOG MTMMPH FANZCA
Andrew worked in a variety of rural and remote locations as a GP including three years with the RFDS in far north Queensland and a year in northern Canada before undergoing specialty training in Anaesthesia. He is currently the Director of Anaesthesia, Pain and Perioperative Medicine at Calvary Hospital, senior staff specialist in the pain management unit and department of anaesthesia at the Canberra Hospital and a lecturer at the Australian National University Medical School.  An interest in behavioural change and community medicine was developed though this period including a degree in public health.   Andrew’s biggest interest in pain is in behavioural modification and in transitional pain and he very much likes working in a multidisciplinary clinic with a solid team with wide skills and interests.

Mr Connor Gleadhill

University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Population Health, Newcastle Sports Medicine

Tel: 0405 203 661
Fax: 02 4924 6022

B. Phty (Hons)

Connor is an Irish-Australian physiotherapist and researcher. In his clinical work, Connor has established and run successful businesses and led a state-wide team of health professionals within the New South Wales Police Force. In his research, Connor has established and leads a clinician-led physiotherapy research network in regional New South Wales. In this network, and other projects, Connor works with end-users of research (clinicians, consumers, and other stakeholders) to co-produce clinically relevant translational research. Connor is passionate about making research more useful and leading changes in health systems to improve outcomes for patients with pain and chronic health conditions.

Adjunct A/Prof Cindy Wall

Clinical Psychology Assessment & Consultancy
Fannie Bay NT 0820

Tel: 0488 993 210
Fax: 08 6266 3777

BPsych (Hons), MPsych (Clin.), PhD

Cindy is a clinical psychologist and academic in Darwin NT.  She has experience in occupational rehabilitation, injury management and pre-surgical psychological assessment. Cindy is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in clinical psychology at Charles Darwin University and has a small private practice in Darwin. Her interests are broadly in clinical health psychology, particularly working with compensable injury.  Her research has explored the influence of personality, justice beliefs, and mental health on rehabilitation from work injury. More recently, she has been extending this focus to understanding psychological factors facilitating optimal patient outcomes post diagnosis, injury, or surgery in chronic pain.

Ms Karalyn Huxhagen

KH Pharmacy Consulting
Mackay QLD 4740

Tel: 0418 185 972
Fax: 07 4805 6155

BPharm FPS AACPA

Karalyn is a community pharmacist and an accredited consultant pharmacist. Karalyn performs locum services, medication reviews and delivers quality use of medication programs mainly in rural and regional Australia. Karalyn is a consultant to the PainWISE training program as well as many other professional bodies.
Karalyn has a strong interest in pain management, asthma and COPD, aged care, wound care, travel medicine, chronic disease programs and the health of aboriginal, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander people. Karalyn is credentialed in Mental Health First aid and she provides immunisation services as a community pharmacist.
Karalyn is a prolific writer, reviewer, presenter and consultant for many pharmacy organisations, industry and government bodies and training programs sponsored by manufacturers and health providers.
In January 2010 Karalyn was awarded an Australia Day award for services to the health of the Mackay community and in October 2010 she was awarded the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia Pharmacist of the Year award. Karalyn was awarded a fellowship of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia in 2010. In 2015 she was awarded the Quality Use of Medicine in Pain Management award by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.

Ms Heather Gray

Royal Adelaide Hospital
Adelaide SA

Tel: Email preferred: heather.gray@sa.gov.au
Fax: N/A

BNsg, GradDipNsg, Nurse Practitioner Candidate

Graduating from Flinders University in 1994, Heather spent the first few years of her nursing career in ICU, bridged into perioperative nursing (PACU) before transitioning to the acute pain specialty. She has been the Nurse Unit Manager of the Acute Pain Service at the Royal Adelaide Hospital since 2015.

Mr Sinan Tejani

InBalance Physiotherapy
Launceston TAS 7250

Tel: 0469 967 841
Fax: N/A

MClinPhys (Sports Major) Prof. Certificate In Pain Sciences

Sinan moved to Australia from Mumbai in 2015 to pursue a Master’s in Clinical Physiotherapy. Upon completing his Masters, he moved to Burnie, a regional city on the northwest coast of Tasmania. Living and working in Burnie exposed Sinan to the challenges regional communities face in receiving best practice care, especially when it comes to the management of persistent pain. To that end, he has been involved with Pain Revolution as a Local Pain Educator (LPE) and a mentor to other LPE’s. Sinan is extremely passionate about improving the knowledge and standards of pain care amongst allied health professionals and strongly advocates for the recognition of social determinants of health in outcomes related to pain.  Sinan currently works at InBalance, a multi-disciplinary allied health practice in Launceston, Tasmania. He is a co-writer and co-facilitator of Tame Your Pain, a Pain Management and Education program. Sinan also works as a consultant and coach for BOOST Recovery, an online program for the management of persistent pain. He is currently pursuing his Master of Science in Medicine (Pain Management) from the University of Sydney.

Dr Esther Dube

General Physician and Pain Medicine Specialist
Austin Health
Heidelberg VIC 3084

Tel: 03 9989 1676
Fax: N/A

MBChB, FRACP, FFPMANZCA, Clin Dip Pall Medicine, MPHTM

Dr Esther Dube is a General Physician and Pain Medicine Specialist working in Melbourne. She did her undergraduate training in Zimbabwe and then undertook her specialist training in the Northern Territory and Victoria. Her pain interests lie in acute pain, peri-operative pain management to improve patient outcomes, chronic pain (particularly in the elderly and medically complex patients) as well as cancer pain.  She is passionate about educating other health care professionals about pain.

Esther is keen to contribute to the APS and was appointed VIC State Director in 2022.

Ms Jacintha Bell

Director/Principal Occupational Therapist
Lifeworks Occupational Therapy
Subiaco WA 6008

Tel: 0451 178 880
Fax: 08 6323 3329

BSc(Occupational Therapy)

Jacintha graduated as an occupational therapist in 2001. She is a member of Occupational Therapy Australia and the World Federation of Occupational Therapy. In her early career, she worked in inpatient, outpatient and community mental health services, and then progressed to working in public and private pain clinics. Jacintha established her own occupational therapy practice in 2014, focusing on mental health, persistent pain and complex/chronic conditions. Jacintha is passionate about enabling people with persistent pain to do the things that are important to them and incorporating participation and meaning into all aspects of service delivery. She is a strong advocate for the inclusion of occupational therapy in multidisciplinary services for people with persistent pain and involved in providing training to health professionals to broaden their skills and abilities in working with people with persistent pain.

Ms Trudy Maunsell

Acute Pain Service
Princess Alexandra Hospital
Woolloongabba QLD 4102

Tel: 07 3176 5547
Fax: 07 3176 5102

RN RM NUM Cert B Health Management MScMed (Pain Management) Clinical Nurse Consultant

Trudy has a broad range of clinical experience in rural, remote and metropolitan hospitals as a Registered Nurse and Midwife and has been involved in pain management as a Clinical Nurse Consultant for the past 18 years after becoming interested in pain whilst a Nursing Unit Manager of an acute surgical ward in a regional referral hospital.
Trudy's interests in pain management include clinical care delivery, the establishment of outcome based key performance indicators for acute pain services and pain management education. Trudy has also conducted several commissioned training programs for nursing staff in Hong Kong and Singapore. 

Prof Kevin Keay

Department of Anatomy
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006

Tel: 02 9351 4132
Fax: 02 9351 2817

PhD

Kevin has led the Australian Pain Society Scientific Program Committee (SPC) since April 2017.

Dr Lincoln Tracy

School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine
Monash University
Melbourne VIC 3004

Tel: 03 9903 0288
Fax: N/A

BBiomedSc (Hons) SpecCertCR (Neuro) PhD
Dr Lincoln Tracy completed his PhD in the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University in 2017. His doctoral research focused on the psychological and physiological modulation of pain experience, and included testing the effects of intranasal oxytocin on pain in people with chronic neck and shoulder pain. He is currently employed as a Research Fellow in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, where he works on the Burns Registry of Australia and New Zealand.

Dr Joanne Harmon

School of Clinical and Health Sciences
University of South Australia
Adelaide SA 5000

Tel: 08 8302 1442
Fax: N/A

RN BN (Hons) PhD, BAppSci (Cons Tech) MACN
Dr Joanne (Jo) Harmon is a registered nurse and academic located at the University of South Australia.  She completed her nursing degree in 2011 with honours and then her PhD in 2016, both at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Joanne’s thesis was titled “The assessment and management of pain in older people by nurses in acute care: a focused ethnography”. Her research interests are focused on qualitative research, critical care, acute acre, care of the older person and pain care provision.

Dr Michael Farrell

Retired

Tel: N/A
Fax: N/A

PhD, MSC, BAppSc (Phy)
Dr Michael Farrell trained and worked as a Physiotherapist before starting his research career. Recipient of a NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Fellowship, Michael completed a postdoc in the lab of Richard Gracely at the National Institutes of Health before returning to Melbourne and joining the Howard Florey Institute in 2003. Leader of the Interoception Imaging team at the Florey, Michael was also a C.R. Roper Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He joined the Department of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences at Monash University as an Associate Professor in 2014.
Michael uses functional brain imaging techniques including positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and perfusion-fMRI to investigate the human brain control of sensations and regulatory responses that arise from signals inside the body.

Professor Fiona Blyth

Sydney School of Public Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health
University of Sydney
Camperdown NSW 2006

Tel: fiona.blyth@sydney.edu.au
Fax: N/A

Fiona Blyth (BSc (Med), MBBS (Hons), MPH, PhD, FAFPHM) is a Professor of Public Health and Pain Medicine at the University of Sydney. A public health physician, pain epidemiologist and medical educator, she is currently Head of the University of Sydney Concord Clinical School at Repatriation General Concord Hospital, and Associate Dean within the Faculty of Medicine. She is internationally recognised for her conceptual and empirical work in characterizing the burden of chronic pain conditions within populations. Fiona has been involved in studies of chronic disease epidemiology (with a specific interest in pain-related conditions) for more than 15 years. This includes large prospective cohort studies, RCTs, pharmacoepidemiological studies, and health services research using linked routinely collected datasets. She was on the expert reference group for low back pain for the World Health Organization’s 2010 Global Burden of Disease Project. She has strong links with local and international groups researching healthy ageing, arthritis/musculoskeletal conditions, and injury. She has a particular interest in multi-morbidity of chronic conditions, and has co-authored a book chapter on this topic related to pain and multimorbidity.

In the last five years she was also Head of Intramural Research at the Sax Institute, who are national and international leaders in research on healthy ageing, health services research, fostering collaborative research and translation of research into health policy. Currently, she is Senior Advisor in the Knowledge Exchange Division. In this role she had extensive involvement with knowledge brokering, and training knowledge brokers.

Fiona was awarded an AM on Australia Day 2018 for her significant service to medical research and education in the fields of public health, pain management and ageing, and to health policy reform.

Ms Tracy Hallen

DC Conference & Association Management
North Sydney NSW 2060

Tel: 02 9016 4343
Fax: N/A

BEc
Inspired by the work of the Australian Pain Society, Tracy joined the DC Conference & Association Management team, in February 2010. In her role as Executive Officer, Tracy assists the APS to fulfil its strategic goals and enhance membership services.

Ms Kylie Dark

DC Conference & Association Management
North Sydney NSW 2060

Tel: 02 9016 4343
Fax: N/A

Kylie has a broad range of experience gained from working across various sectors in her career including event management, hospitality management and more recently, medical administration following her return to the workforce after spending time at home managing a busy household of five!