Dr Jane Bickford

Jane is a passionate educator, early career researcher and certified practising speech pathologist. She teaches in the Bachelor and Master of Speech Pathology programs and is currently the theme leader for eLearning for the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Jane has worked in a range of clinical and community settings, with diverse populations in both Australia and the UK. Her academic interests include voice and voice disorders, the effects of detrimental change to communicative competence to self-identity and social participation, adjustment to acquired communication changes, occupational voice disorders, therapeutic communication skill development, 'consumer voice' in person-centred service delivery and the experience of transition (in education and healthcare). She is also a clinical educator and has run the voice screening clinic and routinely leads voice care training workshops.

Jane has also worked as Course Coordinator for the Master of Speech Pathology and  Director of First Year Studies for the School of Health Sciences. In this role, she supported and collaborated with the other First Year Co-ordinators in the school to develop transition curricula that enhances the first year experience for students.

Jane's clinical experience inspired her to pursue her PhD. Her project focused on the experience of living with and supporting individuals with total laryngectomy. She received the Vice Chancellor's Award for Doctoral Thesis Excellence. Jane has supervised a number of research projects, including one examining the occupational voice problems experienced by frontline service providers at Flinders University and another focused on the knowledge and utility of the ICF-Framework by practising speech pathologists and speech pathology students in Australia.

Voice and voice disorders, the effects of detrimental changes to communicative competence to self-identity and social participation, adjustment to acquired communication disorders, occupational voice disorders, treatment for head and neck lymphoedema, therapeutic communication skill development, 'consumer voice' in person-centred service delivery and the experience of transition (in education and healthcare).

Jane is currently supervising three honours students. The projects are:

1) A national survey of communicative participation after total laryngectomy (1 student)

2) Incidence of lymphoedema following head and neck cancer treatment, and evaluation of clinical assessment tools (2 students).