Rate My Professor Judith Finn

Professor Judith Finn is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University and Director of the Prehospital, Resuscitation and Emergency Care Research Unit (PRECRU) in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, a position held since 2013 in collaboration with St John Ambulance WA. She holds a PhD (2002) investigating prognostic determinants of survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, MEdSt, GradDipPH, BSc, DipAppSci, RN, RM, ICCert, and FCNA. Beginning her career as a critical care registered nurse, she advanced to Clinical Nurse Consultant in a Surgical High Dependency Unit in Adelaide, South Australia, where in the late 1980s she introduced defibrillation by non-critical care registered nurses using manual defibrillators into private hospitals. From early in her nursing career, she taught advanced life support and recognition of the deteriorating patient. Transitioning to academia in the 1990s, she has educated generations of healthcare professionals and resuscitation scientists. She previously directed the Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (Aus-ROC) from 2012 to 2019, affiliated with Monash University and Curtin University, establishing the Australian and New Zealand out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry.

Professor Finn specializes in resuscitation science and prehospital emergency care, with research interests encompassing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, epidemiology, and critical care nursing. She has authored over 280 peer-reviewed publications, garnering more than 22,000 citations and an h-index of 70, while securing over $30 million in competitive research funding. Notable leadership includes landmark clinical trials such as PACA, PARAMEDIC 2 (adrenaline in cardiac arrest), RINSE (rapid infusion of cold normal saline during CPR), and EXACT (oxygen in cardiac arrest), which have shaped international resuscitation guidelines. She leads the Western Australian out-of-hospital cardiac arrest registry and has co-authored key ILCOR publications, including three updates to the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest Utstein Template. Extensively involved with ILCOR for over two decades, she served as Co-Chair of the Interdisciplinary Task Force (2002–2005) and Education, Implementation and Teams Task Force (2010–2015), and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee (2019–2023). In Australia, she joined the Australian Resuscitation Council in 1993, chairs its Western Australian Branch, and teaches on the Advanced Life Support Instructors course. Major awards include the John Curtin Distinguished Professor title (2018), Fellowship of the American Heart Association (2012), honorary membership of the European Resuscitation Council (2017), and designation as an ILCOR Giant. She has supervised over 30 postgraduate research students, promoting interdisciplinary and diverse research capacity.