Rate My Professor Sarah Hug

Ms Sarah Hug serves as a Lecturer in the Curtin School of Allied Health within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. She is a final-year PhD candidate at the same institution, with her thesis centred on optimising access to pulmonary rehabilitation services for individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Perth. This research is conducted as part of the m-PR Research Collaborative. Concurrently, Hug holds a position as a part-time senior physiotherapist in the Physiotherapy Department at Royal Perth Hospital. Her academic background includes a Bachelor of Science.

Hug's research specializations lie in physiotherapy, focusing on respiratory rehabilitation for COPD patients, including referral pathways, patient uptake and completion of programs, engagement strategies, illness perceptions, and risk factors for hospitalisation. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals. Key publications include "Road to referral success in COPD: Enhancing patient engagement with pulmonary rehabilitation referrals" (Respiratory Medicine, 2024), "Quantifying uptake and completion of pulmonary rehabilitation programs among people with COPD: A prospective cohort study" (Chronic Respiratory Disease, 2024), "OPTImising the implementation of pulMonary rehAbiLitation in primary care (OPTIMAL): protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial" (BMC Pulmonary Medicine, 2020), "An Evaluation of Factors That Influence Referral to Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programs Among People With COPD" (Chest, 2022), "Characterising hospitalisation risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using unsupervised machine learning" (Respirology, 2023), and "The Role of Illness Perceptions in Dyspnoea-Related Fear in People with COPD" (Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2024). Hug has earned accolades such as the Better Breathing Foundation Scholarship in 2021 to fund her PhD and an award at the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ) and Australian and New Zealand Society of Respiratory Science (ANZSRS) joint scientific meeting for her work titled "Going the extra step to enhance referrals to pulmonary rehabilitation for people with COPD."