Zephanie Tyack

Zephanie is a Senior Research Fellow and occupational therapist based at the Child Health Research Centre, and a member of the management team of the Centre for Children’s Burns and Trauma Research, Brisbane. She has a clinical background specialising in paediatrics and burn care. She has worked clinically and in management positions at Royal Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, in private practice and in research capacity building positions in hospitals and health services.

Since 2013 Zephanie’s research has focussed on developing and validating patient-reported outcome measures, as well as using these measures therapeutically for clinical decision making. She led the development of four versions of the Brisbane Burn Scar Impact Profile which have been translated into Czech and are undergoing cross-cultural validation for Brazilian Portuguese. She has a vision of providing all children and their caregivers with an opportunity to communicate their needs and priorities during treatment in a paediatric hospital or health service.

Her current program of work includes collaborative work with children, their caregivers and health professionals to co-design and test the effectiveness and implementation of technology-based interventions in clinical settings to improve quality of life. These interventions include a web-based intervention for paediatric health professionals to support the psychosocial health of families with a child who has experienced physical trauma, and an electronic intervention for children with skin conditions and their caregivers that provides feedback about the patient's health-related quality of life to health professionals. Zephanie also has a continued interest in investigating the effectiveness and implementation of novel interventions to prevent or improve the impact of skin conditions in children and their families. This includes the use of ablative fractional CO2 laser, medical needling, pressure garment and silicone therapy, medical hypnosis and interventions to promote adherence and reduce the burden of treatment.