Dr Sarah White

My goal is to support people to improve how they work together through communication with a focus on evidence from research on actual practice. I achieve this through using up-to-date teaching methods, researching conversation, developing data-driven training, and communicating more broadly about the science of conversation, particularly as it relates to healthcare.

As an educator, I have experience in teaching across the breadth of higher and continuing education, particularly with healthcare students and providers. I create authentic learning experiences to support students to become critical thinkers and resilient professionals. This approach is designed to assist in developing learner capacity to analyse the quality of information, communicate and work in teams, and critically consider ethical, social, and professional challenges. As an educational leader, I aim to instil that same intense focus and commitment to evidence-informed student learning in those that I mentor and within the teams I lead. My accomplishments and reflective approach to learning and teaching were recognised through being awarded Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) in 2019 and an Australian Award for University Teaching Citation in 2022.

As a researcher, I lead an innovative program of research with an aim to improve communication between clinicians and patients. This includes research on surgeon-patient consultations, telehealth, and pain talk. Findings from this and other research, as well as editorial and opinion articles, have been published and presented to a range of communication, clinical, and policy audiences. I am on the editorial board for BJGP Open, Qualitative Health Communication, and Health Literacy and Communication Open. 

At a national and international level, I contribute to the fields of conversation analysis communication in healthcare, particularly through my active membership of the International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA) and the International Association for Communication in Healthcare (EACH) since 2015. In 2018 I was elected Deputy National Representative for EACH and through that, and my role in the policy and practice subcommittee at an international level, I worked to make further connections between research, teaching, and policy, particularly through development of a social media strategy. In 2021-2022 I served as National Representative and am currently Deputy National Representative. Through these roles I have been working collaboratively to develop a framework around communication in clinical practice. At an international level, I led the development of a position paper relating to policy and practice around communication in healthcare in response to COVID-19.