Desley Hegney

Professor Desley Hegney is a Professor of Nursing at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Queensland. She is the Director of the Research and Practice Development Centre, jointly badged research centre of UQ and Blue Care. She was the inaugural President of the Association for Australian Rural Nurses and was the inaugural Editor of the Australian Journal of Rural Health (1992 - 2002). Her research has concentrated on nursing workforce issues in primary health care including the first published research on the role and function of the rural nurse in Australia. She is extensively published in rural nursing workforce issues. She has also undertaken research into the role of the registered and enrolled nurse employed in general practice.

Other research into health service delivery models in rural Australia have included the effectiveness of a community health nurse in the ED to prevent re-presentations of elderly patients; infant feeding support services in rural Queensland; the effectiveness of an outreach palliative care service in rural Queensland; and the use of a triage tool to standardise triage assessment by nurses in the ED.