Community Nursing

Biography

Professor O’Brien is a Registered Nurse (mental health and general nursing) with extensive clinical experience in mental health community case management, acute mental health intake assessment, family therapy and aged care across rural, regional and metropolitan settings. Tony has held clinical roles as a Registered Nurse throughout his academic career and in the UK, Singapore and New Zealand, as well as his home country Australia. As an academic, Professor O'Brien has provided curriculum consultation to nursing groups and universities in Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, Brunei and Singapore; including curriculum review and development workshops. Over the last 25 years he has taught into mental health promotion, general nursing, research and undergraduate and postgraduate courses in six different universities. He is currently the Discipline Head of Nursing and the Post Graduate Director of course work programs at the University of Newcastle, School of Nursing and Midwifery. His teaching skills and experience have encompassed small groups, problem based learning, simulation and clinical laboratory teaching, communication labs, large lectures and online teaching in the Blackboard and other integrated virtual learning environments. A few career highlights include establishing the clinical master’s mental health program at Massey University in New Zealand in the late 90s. In 2006 he successfully prepared the National University of Singapore Bachelor of Science (BSc) Nursing for accreditation with the Singapore Nursing Board. At NUS he helped to design the state of the art simulation labs in the clinical science building contiguous to the National University Hospital. When at SCU Tony established the Coffs Harbour campus and the Port Macquarie campuses. He has published over 171 reports, monographs, book chapters and journal articles (83) combined; and presented more than 62 invited, plenary or keynote conference presentations http://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/tony-obrien for a summary

Research Interest

Community Health Nursing