Dr Virginia Plummer

PhD, RN, RM, GCHPE,CertCritCare, BN,GradDipHlthAdmin, MSc (Hlth Policy & Mgmnt)

Senior Lecturer

Phone: +61 3 9904 4064 Fax: +61 3 9904 4655 Email: Virginia.Plummer@med.monash.edu.au

Newsline story on "Making the most of our precious nursing resources" by Dr Virginia Plummer, please click here

Teaching

• Course Coordinator, Bachelor of Nursing/Bachelor of Emergency Health (Paramedic) 
• Evidence based practice and research
• Acute care – Clinical practicum final year students, international students
• Interprofessional health education, nursing and paramedic practice
• Nursing informatics
• Case management and care integration
• Nursing management

Research Interests

Virginia Plummer is a practicing clinician in acute care, accident and emergency, and midwifery. Her hospital management experience includes both the public and private sectors, and board membership of several health care organizations. Virginia’s research interests for the past 14 years have been in the areas of nursing costs, nursing workload and nursing resource allocation.

After completion of a PhD in 2005 analyzing patient dependency data in public and private hospitals in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, Virginia is now establishing further post-doctoral research in refining nursing service weights, and is currently researching in the area of e-prescribing and interprofessional education.

She is currently supervising local and international students of Masters of Nursing and PhD in the areas of emergency nursing, triage, high dependency nursing, intensive care nursing, inflammatory bowel disease, casemix, nursing informatics, midwifery, health service management and leadership, nursing workloads and workplace satisfaction for nurses.

Accredited Level 2 Supervisor

Preferred Research Methodologies

• Quantitative methods

Areas of research interest

• Health Service Management
• Acute Care
• Emergency
• Midwifery
• SCN
• Casemix
• Nursing informatics
• Patient dependency
• Nurse-patient ratios
• Nursing Costs
• E-prescribing
• High acuity nursing
• IPE and the paramedic nurse
• International recruitment

Committees

• Hearing Panel Member, Health Practitioner Registration Boards, DHS 
• Standing Committee Ethics in Research Involving Humans, Monash University 
• Research Committee, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Monash University 
• Education Committee, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Monash University

Professional Affiliations

• Fellow, Royal College of Nursing Australia 
• Fellow, Australian College of Health Service Executives 
• Member, Clinical Costing Standards Association of Australia
• Member, Health Informatics Society of Australia
• Member, College of Emergency Nursing Australasia

• Member, Oceania Chapter, World Association for Disaster & Emergency Medicine (WADEM)

Recent Publications

Plummer, V. (2009). Chapter 9. Shaping funding policy for nursing service. Nursing and Clinical Informatics: Socio-Technical Approaches. pp124-143. Ed Bettina Staudinger, Victoria Hob & Herwig Ostermann.

Newton, J. & Plummer, V. (2009). Using creativity to encourage reflection in undergraduate education. Reflective Practice, 10(1), 67-76.

Al Hosis, K., Plummer, V. & O'Connor, M. (2008). Exploring succession planning for nursing in Saudi Arabia. 4th International Nurse Management Conference . Turkey Oct 13-15 2008.

Plummer, V. & Heslop, L. (2008). Can nursing care requirements be accurately measured based on an analysis of patient dependency data? Casemix Evolution: extending the boundaries. Adelaide Nov 16-19 2008.

Plummer, V. (2006). Informing Nursing Resource Management – a Study of TrendCare data. Full paper, submitted for presentation at HISA conference, Sydney August 2006. Refereed.

Plummer, V. (2005). The Australian Mandatory Staffing Experience, Book chapter. Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care. Eds Mason, D.J., Lewitt, J.K., Chaffee, M. W. 5th edition.

Plummer V. (2005). An analysis of patient dependency data utilizing the TrendCare System, PhD, Monash University, Australia.