Monash University Department of Rural and Indigenous Health

Isabel Ellender

Senior Lecturer

Telephone: +61 3 5128 1018
Facsimile: +61 3 5128 1080
Email: Isabel.Ellender@med.monash.edu.au

I trained as a nurse in London’s University College Hospital and followed my interests in surgical nursing for some years. After moving to Australia, I changed career course and re-trained as an archaeologist. This involved my working closely with Indigenous communities in southeast Australia for 20 years. I joined Monash to teach Indigenous cultural heritage, history and colonialism, and have been a member of the Indigenous team since. My Masters degree examined the ethics of conducting research with Indigenous people and knowledge. The combining of these 2 careers has led me into the field of Indigenous health. My teaching focuses on the historical and social determinants of contemporary Indigenous health and how, as professionals, medical, nursing and health science students can bring about tangible improvements in health outcomes for Indigenous individuals and communities.

Academic qualifications

• Masters degree: Pith-helmeted experts and greenhorns: approaches to conducting research with Indigenous communities.
An examination of Indigenous perspectives of what constitutes ethical academic research that involves their culture and communities.
Monash University.
• Batchelor of Arts (Honours) Aboriginal skeletal remains: their value in archaeology.
La Trobe University.
• State Registered Nurse. University College London.

Areas of interest

• Cultural competence.
• Interprofessional learning among nursing and medical students.
• Reasons for low recruitment and retention of Indigenous students in health courses.

Teaching commitments

I supervise students interested in studying aspects of Indigenous health at postgraduate level. I am the co-ordinator of the postgraduate unit CRH1010—Indigenous Health for Health Professionals, which is a first semester coursework elective in the Masters of Rural Health available to all health professionals.

At the undergraduate level, I teach about Indigenous health within the first and second year MBBS medical course and first year Nursing and Health Sciences curriculum at Gippsland and Peninsula campuses.

I am the co-ordinator of 2 Selectives which take medical and nursing students for field experience with Indigenous communities where they also learn about their health services. I also teach within the Gippsland medical students’ placements.

I conduct cultural awareness and security workshops within and outside Monash.

Projects

• Footprints Forwards
My input included investigation of recruitment, retention and audit of Indigenous medical students.
• Apunipima
Regional Health Strategy, Cape York. Helped to set up the partnership with Monash.

Affiliations

• Indigenous Matters Committee
• Australian Archaeological Association
• Anthropological and Archaeological Society of Victoria
• Friend of the Merri Creek
• Liaison with Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit, and Victorian Aboriginal Community Control Health Organisation

Selected publications

Chesters, J., Drysdale, M., Ellender, I., Faulkner, S., Turnbull, L., Kelly, H., Robinson, A., Chambers, H., (2009). "Footprints forwards blocked by a Failures Discourse: Issues in Providing Advice about Medicine and Other Health Science Careers to Indigenous Secondary School Students." Australian Journal of Career Development 18(1): 26-35.

Ellender, I. and Drysdale, M. 2008. How much is enuff rope? In Crosling, G., Thomas, L., & Heagney, M. Student retention programs in higher education. Routledge, New York.

Drysdale, M., Faulkner, S., Chesters, J. (Eds). 2006. Footprints forwards: better strategies for the recruitment, retention and support of Indigenous medical students. Monash University. Contributor and team member.

Ellender, I and Richardson, M. 2006. Outback challenge! Nursing and medical students manage emergency scenarios in a remote setting. Presented to RCNA conference (July 2006).

Drysdale, M. and Ellender, I. 2005. Iga Warta challenges nursing and medical students! Presented to the AARN conference in Melbourne (November 2005).

Ellender, I. 2005. ‘Pith-helmeted Experts’ and ‘Greenhorns’?? Presentation and convenor of a workshop on cultural competence and research ethics with Indigenous people. The Monash Centre for the Study of Ethics in Medicine and Society Intensive Research Ethics Course, Portsea (December 2005).

Ellender, I. 2004. Pith-helmeted experts and greenhorns. Approaches to conducting research with Indigenous communities. Unpublished masters thesis, Monash University.

Wilson, L. and Ellender, I. 2002. Aboriginal versus European perspectives on country. Philosophy Activism and Nature Journal 2:1-15.

Ellender, I. 2001. The Yowenjerre of south Gippsland: traditional groups and social boundaries. The Artefact 25:9-18.