Rate My Professor Kirsty Shearer

Kirsty Shearer serves as Senior Lecturer in Paramedic Science within the School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences at CQUniversity Australia. With over twenty years of on-road paramedic experience spanning New South Wales and South Australia, she qualified as an Intensive Care Paramedic with the SA Ambulance Service in 2000 and progressed to Extended Care Paramedic in 2011. In these capacities, she assumed clinical leadership roles and led projects such as researching complex client management systems, implementing statewide seasonal influenza immunisation programs for ambulance personnel, developing infection prevention and control strategies, and managing staff exposure incidents. Transitioning to education, she worked as a casual tutor and lecturer for the Bachelor of Paramedic Science at Flinders University from November 2010 and as Clinical Research Coordinator in the Heart Health stream at the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute in late 2014. She joined CQUniversity in 2015, initially teaching third-year undergraduate paramedic science before coordinating and instructing postgraduate units in tactical medicine, critical care, primary healthcare, and public health.

Her academic credentials include a Diploma of Health Science (Nursing) from the University of New England, Diploma of Health Science (Pre-hospital Care) from Charles Sturt University, Bachelor of Health Science (Nursing) from Southern Cross University, Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education from CQUniversity, Master of Bioethics from Monash University, and PhD from CQUniversity on ethics in paramedic education and practice. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Shearer's research interests encompass paramedic pharmacology, ethics of paramedic practice, bioethics, critical and extended care paramedic practice, and other biomedical and clinical sciences. Notable publications comprise 'Perceptions of ethical dilemmas in Australian paramedicine' (2021), 'Undergraduate Ethics Education in Paramedicine in Australia' (2022), 'Factors influencing the lived experience of paramedics facing ethical dilemmas: a case comparison' (2023), and her PhD thesis 'The tangled web of wisdom: A mixed methods exploration of ethics in paramedic education and practice'. She holds memberships in the Australasian College of Paramedicine and the Australian Association of Bioethics and Health Law.