Joan Henderson

• Position: Senior Research Assistant
• Employer: Family Medicine Research Centre, University of Sydney, Westmead

What attracted you to Health Information Management?
The variety of subjects and diversity of job prospects – apart from a career in medical records, it presented a sound base from which to move into a specialised area such as information technology, research or education.

Give a brief description of your career path from first job to current job.

I am still with the same organisation since Graduation. My first position as a research assistant (Level 5) began following the end of the third year of the degree. The fourth (Honours) year was the first year of full time employment with my current employer and my thesis topic was based on one of my employer’s projects. Since graduating, my employment has continued with the same organisation as a research assistant (Level 6). My employer has recently recommended that my position be upgraded to that of a senior research assistant (Level 7) which has been verbally approved.

What kind of work does your position involve?

I am involved in a major research project which collects and analyses data from general practitioners about the morbidity and treatment of their patients. The project is privately funded by government (Pharmaceutical Branch and GP Branch of Dept of Health & Aged Care) and pharmaceutical companies. My role is to liaise with representatives of these bodies, write research questions for their topics of interest, design data collection and instruction forms for the GPs, and liaise with the AIHW’s ethics committee prior to the printing and distribution of the data collection material to doctors.

What is the best aspect of your job?

The best aspect is that it is interesting and I use a variety of the skills I learned at uni e.g., medical terminology and medical science, forms design, research skills, literature reviews, writing, report preparation, database design and maintenance, as well as a range of management skills. In the absence to the director and project manager during September, I have acted as director and supervised all staff (6 full time, 2 part time and 7 casuals) for that month. There are also some boring aspects although I now supervise someone else to do the majority of envelope stuffing.

What is a normal day like for you?

A ‘normal’ day is difficult to define. I have a variety of tasks that occur daily, weekly or monthly. A typical day will usually involve telephone contact with general practitioners to clarify questions about the project or the data collection material, maintenance of databases containing our GP sample, answering coding queries from data entry staff, and supervising recruiters and administrative staff who collate and post research kits, reports etc to our participating GPs. The forms design and research questions change every 5 weeks, so that usually involves fairly full time work on those activities for about 2 weeks of these 5.

What are your future career goals?

I’m not sure at this stage. The work I’m doing now is very interesting but I don’t know if I want to still be here in 5 years time. I do like research, however, and I think I’d like to continue along that career path, or perhaps move into education at some point. There have already been suggestions from my employer about doing a PhD in the not too distant future. I don’t think I really want to follow the mainstream in the hospital system, but you never know what opportunities may present themselves in the future, but I feel confident that I could take a new direction if I chose, especially with the sound base the HIM degree has provided.