Rate My Professor Kirstine Shrubsole

Dr. Kirstine Shrubsole serves as Adjunct Senior Lecturer and Teaching Associate in Allied Health and Midwifery within the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University. She earned a Bachelor of Speech Pathology with First Class Honours and a PhD from The University of Queensland in 2018. Prior to her academic roles, she accumulated ten years of clinical experience as a speech pathologist. Currently, she holds an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellowship at the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland. Previously, she was Conjoint Research Fellow in Speech Pathology at Princess Alexandra Hospital and The University of Queensland, where she built research capacity and mentored speech pathologists while supporting multidisciplinary research.

Dr. Shrubsole's research specializations center on implementation science to bridge evidence-practice gaps in speech pathology, with a particular emphasis on aphasia rehabilitation and stroke recovery across the care continuum. She has demonstrated that targeted interventions can achieve sustainable practice changes in healthcare teams, yielding benefits for patients, clinicians, and organizations. Her contributions include co-founding and serving as Deputy Lead of the Collaboration of Aphasia Triallists’ Implementation Science in Aphasia working group, and affiliating with the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation and Recovery. Major awards encompass the NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellowship for the Aphasia Implementation Toolkit Project and a Stroke Foundation research grant awarded in 2020. She is chief investigator on three MRFF grants, including projects on communication-accessible health care and digital environments for stroke survivors. Key publications feature "Improving communication partner training of familiar partners of people with aphasia: results of a pilot stepped wedge implementation trial and embedded process evaluation" (2026, Disability and Rehabilitation), "Clinical effectiveness of the comprehensive, high-dose aphasia treatment program for people with poststroke aphasia" (2025, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research), "Communication partner training with familiar partners of people with aphasia: A systematic review and synthesis of barriers and facilitators to implementation" (2023, International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders), "Sustaining acute speech–language therapists’ implementation of recommended aphasia practices: a mixed methods follow-up evaluation of a cluster RCT" (2022, International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders), and "Establishing quality indicators and implementation priorities for post-stroke aphasia services through end-user involvement" (2024, Health Expectations). With over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, her work has influenced national strategies for aphasia guideline implementation and collaborations with the Stroke Foundation.