Margo Pritchard

Leading perinatal researcher appointed as Frances Bloomberg International Visiting Professor

12 December 2014

Dr. Margo Pritchard, RN, RM, NNC, BA, PhD, has been appointed the 2014/2015 Frances Bloomberg International Visiting Professor.

Pritchard is the Principal Perinatal Clinical Researcher-Trialist at Women’s and Newborn Services in the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research.  She is an honorary research consultant for Health and Behavioural Sciences at the School of Nursing & Midwifery, UQ and for Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the School of Medicine, UQCCR.  She is also a Senior Lecturer, Medicine, Health and Life Sciences at Queen’s University, Belfast.  Margo trained as a nurse at St. George Hospital and as a midwife at Ipswich Hospital in Australia.  She received her BA at Griffith University, her Advance Neonatal Nursing Certificate at the University of Technology and her PhD at the School of Medicine, UQ in Australia.

Preventing premature and high-risk birth and its consequent disabilities remains elusive. Child health surveillance systems are an important health strategy to identify and intervene in children at risk for adverse development. The focus on early risk-reduction provides a window of opportunity for risk-prevention programs from the bedside to community. Nurses are well placed to develop screening, surveillance and intervention (SSI) research in these vulnerable populations.

Pritchard will visit Bloomberg Nursing four times over the next twelve months, focusing on developmental surveillance in vulnerable populations: clinical trial nursing networks.  The aims of this Visiting Professorship are to enhance the international relevance of current research activity with the Faculty in relation to perinatal health and wellbeing, and to explore the potential for international, multi-site collaboration by working with the Faculty and relevant clinical partners. This project is especially timely as Canadian and Australian institutions and funding agencies emphasize international collaborative research to build new ways of engagement and new management systems that enhance life-span health and well-being.

Pritchard’s visits to the Faculty will culminate in an invited scholarly workshop, an Institute led through the Faculty’s Centre for Professional Development, public lectures to our donor and alumni community, as well as presentations to our faculty and student communities.  She will also work with Bloomberg Nursing graduate students to consult on their research.