PhD Student, Department of General Practice

School of Primary Health Care

Monash University

Australia

Dr Karyn Alexander is a practising general practitioner and PhD student in the Department of General Practice. She is researching preventive healthcare for young children in general practice and has recently completed phase 1 of the study, which examined the behaviours and perceptions of parents, GPs and practice nurses. Karyn is now starting phase 2 of the study, which is a pilot study that will trial an intervention developed to overcome the barriers to preventive healthcare for preschool children, revealed in phase 1 of the study. This will be piloted in two general practices in 2014. Karyn presented a paper at the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service (PHCRIS) Conference this year in Sydney, called “Applying the Behaviour Change Wheel: Developing a theoretically grounded intervention to improve preventive health care for young children in general practice”. Karyn has also first authored two publications from her research. She is currently supported by a Chris Silagy Fellowship from the RACGP.

She is researching preventive healthcare for young children in general practice and has recently completed phase 1 of the study, which examined the behaviours and perceptions of parents, GPs and practice nurses.