Claire Rickard

Rickard is an NHMRC Leadership 2 Fellow and esteemed nurse researcher. She has completed over 50 randomised controlled trials and focuses on preventing healthcare associated infections and other complications for people with central, peripheral, venous and arterial catheters. As a Registered Nurse, she specialized in acute and critical care, and then coordinated pharmaceutical and investigator-initiated ICU research at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Her PhD (QUT, 2004) studied the impact of the duration of intravascular administration set use on bloodstream infection. Rickard has consistently won funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) since 2008. She is committed to mentoring and developing opportunities for nursing clinician researchers, with many going on to prestigious careers and externally funded fellowships. Her international projects include the largest ever vascular access study - The One Million Global peripheral intravenous catheter Study (OMG Study). Rickard established the Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching and Research (AVATAR) in 2007 as a mentoring network which has evolved into a mature multi-institutional investigator network of >100 nursing and medical clinicians, scientists, consumers, statisticians and health economists who undertake large randomized controlled trials and related work in partnership with hospitals in Australia and overseas. AVATAR also has a significant educational focus, with workshops, a Masters level course and a focus on PhD and postdoctoral researcher development. Professor Rickard's awards include induction into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2013, and election to the prestigious Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2015. She has >300 publications in leading journals such as The Lancet.