Category: Health

Sukhmani Khorana, Bhavya Chitranshi and I recently completed research about the experiences of six cisgender South Asian-Australian women who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. A note about language in this report: The South Asian “women” in our study identified as cisgender. However, we have used a gender-additive approach to language to be respectful and […]

I have long been interested in the significance of food for migrants. As a child whose family moved to Aotearoa, New Zealand in the 70s, I remember the singular pursuit of ingredients. The long-grain rice we tried to buy from an importer, the coriander we grew in the garden, my mother purchasing olive oil from […]

As a clinician and educator, I have long been interested in how to prepare nurses for professional practice. Schon uses a metaphor of terrain made up of high, hard ground overlooking a swamp which Street (1991) has extended to nursing practice. While some clinical problems can be resolved through theory and technique (on hard ground), […]

I am speaking at the WT | Wearable Technologies conference in Sydney next month. I spoke to Wearable Technologies Australia (WTA) about the future of the wearable tech industry and some of the challenges the industry is facing. Check out the  full program here. Here’s a link to the interview we did and I’ve also […]

Social and economic disadvantage are important contributors to poor maternal and perinatal outcomes in high-income countries such as Australia. For example Australian research shows women from refugee backgrounds have higher rates of stillbirth, fetal death in utero and perinatal mortality compared with Australian born women. However, the recent publication of findings from a retrospective (looking back) population […]

It’s always such a buzz to get published, especially when it’s work done with a former student. You can read the article here: Crawford, J., Cooper, S., Cant, R., & DeSouza, R. (2017). The impact of walk-in centres and GP co-operatives on emergency department presentations: A systematic review of the literature. International Emergency Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ienj.2017.04.002. Highlights […]

I am visiting the University of Auckland as an international speaker for the Research Café on Migration & Inequality being organised by the Faculty of Science and School of Population Health. The Research Café is a project of the Engaged Social Science Research Initiative and funded by the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Development Fund. I’ll also be […]

I have had several tooth adventures. The time I rather enthusiastically pushed my middle sister on her bicycle and she fell over the handlebars breaking a tooth (or was that the time I helped her break her collar-bone?). My own dental fluorosis (a developmental disturbance of enamel that results from ingesting high amounts of fluoride during […]

Written for and first published in in the August 2016 edition of Nurse Click  (the Australian College of Nursing’s monthly electronic, interactive PDF publication available to ACN members, and to stakeholders, the wider nursing and non-nursing community who subscribe to it.). Cite as: DeSouza, R. (2016). Wearable devices and the potential for community health improvement. Nurse […]

Are you a  night owl or an early bird? Or do you fall in between? I succumbed and bought a wearable device because I thought it could be useful to track my sleep. I spend a few nights in the city every week and I notice that I feel less rested than when I am ‘home’. It seems […]