OXSTAR - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- DPhil Student and Senior Registrar in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Aditi is a DPhil student with the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences (NDCN) since October 2021, supervised by Associate Professor Helen Higham (NDCN) and Dr. Debbie Aitken (Department of Education). She is an Obstetrics and Gynaecology specialist trainee (ST6). She is the current Obstetrics simulation trainee lead for the Thames Valley Deanery. She has helped create and facilitate the undergraduate multidisciplinary obstetric simulation programme for medical, midwifery, and paramedical students from Oxford and Oxford Brooke's University.
Aditi is also actively involved in promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity (EDI). She regularly delivers lectures on topics such as implicit bias and microaggression, and she collaborates with OxSTaR on faculty and curriculum development to incorporate EDI principles.
Her DPhil research centers around the integration of technical skill simulation into surgical training. To conduct her research, she employs a qualitative and mixed methodology approach. Aditi has collaborated with general surgeons and obstetric trainees to provide simulation training utilizing virtual reality, augmented reality, and low-fidelity models.
Job Titles:
- Senior Simulations Technician
Claire was the Simulation and Education Fellow with the Adult Intensive Care Unit. She has trained in Australia and began her fellowship in Oxford at the beginning of 2019. By the end of 2020 she will have completed her specialist training with the College of Intensive Care Medicine, Australia.
She has extensive experience working clinically in multiple Intensive Care units across New South Wales, as well as here in Oxford. Education has been a longstanding passion of hers, and she has been involved in simulation training since 2014. In 2019 she completed a Graduate Certificate in Flexible Learning and Simulation for Healthcare Professionals from the University of Tasmania.
Job Titles:
- NHS Medical Education and Simulation Fellow
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor in NDCN
- Director of the OxSTaR Centre
- Director of the OxSTaR Centre / Associate Professor / Consultant Anaesthetist
James moved to the OxSTaR in October 2020, to undertake a DPhil supervised by Associate Professor Helen Higham (NDCN) and Professor Alison Noble (IBME). He is a Consultant Anaesthetist, at the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in South Wales, and is a Senior Medical Advisor for Intelligent Ultrasound, a company which produces artificial intelligence (AI) devices for medical ultrasound.
His work with Intelligent Ultrasound focuses on the evaluation of assistive artificial intelligence devices. Part of this work, on the identification of anatomical structures in ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia, contributes to his DPhil.
He completed his undergraduate training at the University of St Andrews (BSc (Hons), Medical Sciences) and Magdalene College, University of Cambridge (MB BChir, Clinical Medicine). After a brief time in surgery, he crossed the blood-brain barrier to anaesthetics and trained as an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the University of Dundee/East of Scotland Deanery. He finished training in August 2020 and has since worked as a consultant and began his DPhil.
Helen is an Associate Professor in NDCN and a Consultant Anaesthetist in the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She has always had a keen interest in medical education and has been the Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the Nuffield Division of Anaesthetics since she took up her post in 2001. She has been the Director of the multi-award winning Oxford Simulation, Teaching and Research Centre (OxSTaR) since it opened in 2008.
Helen was a founding member of the Executive Committee for the Association of Simulated Practice in Healthcare and was President between 2014 and 2017. She was appointed Associate Dean for Simulation and Patient Safety in NHSE Thames Valley in 2021 and remains active nationally in strategic planning for simulation based education.
Job Titles:
- DPhil Student & Consultant Anaesthetist
James Thomas is a Clinical Research Fellow within NDCN. He is a trained primary care physician with a background in medical education, simulation, and technology-enhanced learning. His current interests include virtual reality and generative AI for teaching, assessment, and learning.
Kim worked alongside the OxSTaR team as teaching faculty before she joined it in May 2023 as a Simulation Technician.
Kim has a background in Anaesthetic and Recovery Nursing working across many specialities over the past 15 years. Kim worked in nursing education for a number of years and held the role of Lead Practice Educator for SUWON Theatres prior to joining the OxSTaR team. Kim has a keen interest in human factors and the use of simulation in healthcare education.
Job Titles:
- Administration Assistant
- Assistant
Natalie joined OxSTaR as an administration assistant in 2023, having previously worked with universities and publishing houses in her home country. She is now embarking on a new chapter with the team.
Job Titles:
- DPhil Student and Research Assistant
- Student and Research Assistant
My work is being conducted as an interdisciplinary project between OxSTAR and the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. My research interests are based on investigating the sources of confidence miscalibrations in diagnoses. I am especially interested in how doctors' confidence guide their information seeking and how information seeking behaviour differs between novice and experienced clinicians. This involves looking at how novices and experts weigh up and test hypotheses when formulating differential diagnoses. My work will involve computer-based, VR and simulated scenarios.
Job Titles:
- Lead for Virtual Reality Education
Job Titles:
- Apprentice Medical Simulation Technician