About Us

Background

I graduated with a Bachelor of Speech Pathology (Honours) in 2004 and have gained over 15 years of clinical experience working in in adult speech pathology health services, both in Australia and the United Kingdom. For the majority of my career I have worked in subacute rehabilitation and aged care services as well as palliative care services. My clinical expertise is in the management of swallowing, communication and cognitive disorders resulting from stroke, dementia and progressive neurological diseases.

I commenced working at Barwon Health in 2018 and currently work within the specialist Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Clinic. I really enjoy working as part of a supportive multidisciplinary team and providing secondary and education consultation to speech pathologists working with clients with MND both within Barwon Health and externally state wide.

Research Focus

My recent research focus has been investigating the perceptions of nurses and patients with aphasia on their experiences communicating with each other in the acute stroke ward at Barwon Health. Aphasia is a language disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate. It occurs due to injury to the brain - most commonly from a stroke. This research has identified facilitators and barriers to effective communication for patients with Aphasia in a hospital environment and has identified ways we can make our stroke ward more communicatively accessible. 

 

 

 

 

 

Awards & Achievements

• Principal researcher for two clinical Aphasia research studies (see details below).
• Presented at the National Speech Pathology Australia Conference in 2016 and again in 2019 on my clinical Aphasia research.

Feature Publications

• Heard, R., Anderson, H., & Horsted, C. (2018). Exploring the perceptions of stroke nurses and patients with acquired stroke related communication disorders on their experiences communicating on an acute stroke unit. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, submitted.
• Heard, R., O’Halloran, R. & McKinley, K. (2017). Communication partner training for health care professionals in an inpatient rehabilitation setting: A parallel randomised trial, International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19 (3), 277-286
• McKinley, K., Heard, R., Brinkmann, S., Shulsinger, J. & O’Halloran, R. (2015). Social conversations for hospital patients with acquired communication disabilities, Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech Pathology, 17(1), 27-31

How you can help

Donate

Research requires ongoing investment and there are several ways to support our work. You can make a donation today and contribute to an item on our research group’s wish list, consider a bequest in your will, or establish a lasting legacy fund in your name. No matter what size, your philanthropic support will deliver an immediate impact to this important work. To donate now or for more information, please contact the Barwon Health Foundation.