Katherine Carroll

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Australian National University

Caring for the extremely premature infant born in the grey zone of viability is the most difficult area of neonatal medicine. Little research has been done on antenatal communication between neonatologists and parents anticipating the birth of a periviable infant. This article analyses 25 antenatal consultations between neonatologists and parents i...

Background In this study, we assessed the communication strategies used by neonatologists in antenatal consultations which may influence decision-making when determining whether to provide resuscitation or comfort measures only in the care of periviable neonates. Methods This study employed a qualitative study design using inductive thematic disco...

Objective: The study aimed to identify how, from the perspective of bereaved parents, hospital-based health professionals can better meet their lactation care needs. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 mothers and 7 fathers bereaved by stillbirth, neonatal death, or older infant death. Participants were recruited from three large ho...

Breast milk is a highly valued substance, immunologically and nutritionally, which also signifies maternal care and love for the infant. This intersection of biological and cultural qualities confers breast milk with complex meanings, which necessarily shape the experience of breastfeeding. Our research, investigating the experience of lactation af...

This exploratory study targets a significant gap in the lactation and bereavement literature by exploring bereaved fathers’ experiences, perspectives and practices in relation to their partner’s lactation after stillbirth, neonatal or infant death. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven bereaved fathers in two Australian state/territo...

Objectives While there have been efforts to address common and culturally informed barriers to healthcare, Somali Americans have low rates of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. This study aimed to use video reflexive ethnography (VRE) to identify primary care health inequities, derive interventions aimed at improving HPV vaccination rates in S...

How ten making & doing projects expand STS scholarship through a focus on knowledge expression and knowledge travel in addition to knowledge production. Making & doing projects expand STS scholarship to include the trajectories of STS knowledge flow beyond the boundaries of the field by actively interweaving knowledge expression and travel with kno...

Objective: The study aimed to identify and map the factors that shape the delivery of hospital-based lactation care for bereaved mothers to inform quality improvement initiatives targeting hospital-based lactation care. Methods: Focus groups and interviews were conducted at three large hospitals in Australia with 113 health professionals including...

Objective To use quantitative and qualitative methods to characterize the work patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) enact and explore the interactions between illness, treatment, and life. Patients and Methods In this mixed-methods, descriptive study, adult patients with T2DM seen at the outpatient diabetes clinic at Mayo Clinic in Roches...

Background and objectives: Antenatal consultation between a neonatologist and expectant parent(s) may determine if resuscitation is provided for or withheld from neonates born in the gray zone of viability. In this study, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of uncertainties present and neonatologists' communication strategies regarding such u...

Key Messages • There is a dearth of targeted online lactation health information provided to bereaved parents after stillbirth and infant death. • We collated and critically reviewed international evidence-based lactation and bereavement information to devise a comprehensive framework on the diverse options for lactation management after stillbirth...

Young men are underrepresented in Australian research on family formation, especially young men who are nonmarital fathers, and are not university educated. In this pilot project, an interdisciplinary research team (demography, sociology, and gender studies) based in Australia set out to design an approach that would engage this particular group of...

Lactation is a potent signifier of maternal love and care commonly associated with early motherhood and infant survival. It is common, however, for bereaved mothers who have recently undergone miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death to produce breastmilk. Drawing on a critical feminist lens that seeks to understand how maternal subjectivities and l...

Objective: This paper reports the iterative redesign, feasibility and usability of the Comprehensive Mobile Assessment of Pressure (CMAP) system’s mobile app used by Veterans with SCI. Design: This three-year, multi-staged study used a mixed-methods approach. Setting: Minneapolis VA Health Care System, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Participants: Veterans...

Background and aims Little research has been done on tele‐intensive care unit (ICU) implementation across different types of ICUs, and there exist few studies that have used qualitative research methods to analyze the human and organizational factors influencing optimization of telemedicine for newborn resuscitation. The objective of this study was...

This innovative, practical guide introduces researchers to the use of the video reflexive ethnography in health and health services research. This methodology has enjoyed increasing popularity among researchers internationally and has been inspired by developments across a range of disciplines: ethnography, visual and applied anthropology, medical...

Utilising frozen section technologies, Mayo Clinic has one of the lowest reoperation rates for breast lumpectomy in the United States. The research reported on sought to understand the successful teamwork between the Breast Surgery Team and the Frozen Section Laboratory at Mayo Clinic. Researchers worked collaboratively with healthcare staff from b...

Purpose – This chapter critically engages with a positively oriented emotional reflexivity with the aim of improving inclusivity in bereavement research. Methodology/Approach – The heartfelt positivity methodology intentionally creates positivity through the everyday practices of academic research. In this chapter, emotional reflexivity is guided b...

Background Despite the importance of home enteral nutrition (HEN), there is a lack of understanding within the medical and general community of how HEN impacts the lives of patients and caregivers. Using a theoretical orientation that attends to the materiality of both everyday and medical objects, we explored patients' and family caregivers' every...

Objective This study employs the concept of relational autonomy to understand how relational encounters with family members (FMs) and care providers may shape decisions around ovarian cancer patients’ clinical trial (CT) participation. The study also offers unique insights into how FMs view patients’ decision making. Methods In‐depth interviews we...

Hospital-based video-reflexive ethnography (VRE) is a collaborative visual methodology used by researchers and/or health professionals to understand, interpret, and optimize health professionals’ work practices and patients’ experiences. For more than a decade, the VRE methodology has spread throughout (research) institutions and hospitals internat...

Background: Teleneonatology may improve the quality of high-risk newborn resuscitations performed by general providers in community settings. Variables that affect teleneonatology utilization have not been identified. Introduction: The objective of our mixed-methods study was to understand the barriers and facilitators experienced by local care...

The promise of egg freezing for women’s fertility preservation entered feminist debate in connection with medical and commercial control over, and emancipation from, biological reproduction restrictions. In this paper we explore how women negotiate and make sense of the decision to freeze their eggs. Our analysis draws on semi-structured interviews...

Objective: Clinical trials are vital in the context of ovarian cancer and may offer further treatment options during disease recurrence, yet enrollment remains low. Understanding patient and family member experiences with identifying trials can inform engagement and education efforts. Methods: Interviews were conducted with 33 patients who had e...

Background/aims: Some of the most promising avenues of cancer clinical investigation center on immunotherapeutic approaches. These approaches have provided notable gains in cancer therapeutics with recent Food and Drug Administration approvals of agents of this class in several types of cancers, although gains for ovarian cancer lag behind. This s...

A focus group study of nurses’ and lactation consultants’ experiences of working with bereaved mothers on the issue of lactation management and milk donation after infant death.

Author’s Note: This book chapter will be published in August, 2015 (see: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/critical-kinship) and can be referenced as: Carroll, K. (2015) ‘The milk of human kinship: Donated breast milk in neonatal intensive care’ in Critical Kinship (2015) Kroløkke, C., Myong, L., Stine, A., and Tjørnhøj-Thomsen (Eds.). Rowma...

This article experiments with the dialogic epistolary form as a non-traditional representation of ethnographic research on the topic of breastmilk donation. The epistolary genre was chosen because its structure, purpose, and history embodies the key findings of this research, for example, the gulf between milk donors and recipients and the curiosit...

Aims and Objectives. This paper explores patients’ perspectives on infection prevention and control. Background. Healthcare-associated infections are the most frequent adverse event experienced by patients. Reduction strategies have predominantly addressed front- line clinicians’ practices; patients’ roles have been less explored. Design. Video-ref...

This article outlines the main tenets of affect theory and links these to Sloterdijk’s spherology. Where affect foregrounds prepersonal energies and posthuman impulses, spherology provides a lens for considering how humans congregate in constantly reconfiguring socialities in their pursuit of legitimacy and immunity. The article then explores the r...

Lactation and breast milk can hold great value and meaning for grieving mothers who have experienced a recent death of an infant. Donation to a human milk bank (HMB) as an alternative to discarding breast milk is one means of respecting the value of breast milk. There is little research, national policy discussion, or organizational representation...

Lactation and breast milk can hold great value and meaning for grieving mothers who have experienced a recent death of an infant. Donation to a human milk bank (HMB) as an alternative to discarding breast milk is one means of respecting the value of breast milk. There is little research, national policy discussion, or organizational representation...

When mothers of preterm infants are unable to produce sufficient volumes of breastmilk, neonatologists in many Western countries prescribe pasteurized donor breastmilk. Breastmilk has a paradoxical presence in the neonatal intensive care unit while it has therapeutic properties, it also has the potential to transmit disease. National health authori...

Objective: This study tested the hypothesis that feeding an exclusively human milk (EHM) diet to premature infants reduces the incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) associated with enteral feeding. Study design: An observational study for infants born at less than 33 weeks of gestational age was performed in a single neonatal intensive ca...

Aim: Explore the application and potential of video reflexive ethnography (VRE) to facilitate whole person care (WPC).Objectives: Discuss the ethical issues associated with VRE; explore the foundations of the methodology; and discuss its potential to facilitate WPC.Description: WPC requires a paradigm shift in how we see those we care for, how we s...

Aim: Explore the application and potential of video reflexive ethnography (VRE) to facilitate whole person care (WPC). Objectives: Discuss the ethical issues associated with VRE; explore the foundations of the methodology; and discuss its potential to facilitate WPC. Description: WPC requires a paradigm shift in how we see those we care for, how...

A researcher’s emotional labour is inextricably linked to the methodological and ethical underpinnings of ‘doing’ sensitive and some feminist research. However, a key component of the emotional labour theory does not fit with the emotional labour enacted by some researchers. This article sets out to extend the theory of emotional labour in order to...

We report the results of a qualitative study carried out in metropolitan Australia between 2009 and 2011 that canvassed the issue of payment for research oöcyte donation with participants drawn from three potential donor groups; fertility patients, reproductive donors and young, non-patient women. Research oöcytes are controversial tissues because...

Objectives: Donor human milk (DHM) is increasingly being used in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) to achieve exclusive human milk (EHM) feedings in preterm infants. The aim of the study was to determine the cost of DHM to achieve EHM feeding for very preterm infants. The hypothesis was that the cost of DHM per infant is modulated by the avail...

There is an increased use of pasteurised donor human milk (PDHM) in North American neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in order to achieve exclusive human milk (EHM) feeding for preterm infants. Australia, on the other hand, is relatively new to reintroducing PDHM to NICUs. Very little is known about the perception of multidisciplinary NICU teams...

Objectives Current perspectives concerning clinical decision making favour inclusion of patient preference for therapy. This exploratory study aimed to forge introductory insights into patient preference for outpatient-based rehabilitation after total knee replacement (TKR). Methods TKR recipients from six public hospitals participating in a prospe...

This article develops a model of informed consent for fresh oöcyte donation for stem cell research, during in vitro fertilisation (IVF), by building on the importance of patients' embodied experience. Informed consent typically focuses on the disclosure of material information. Yet this approach does not incorporate the embodied knowledge that pati...

Research involves a complex network of universities, external funding bodies and industry, and researchers are increasingly faced with pressure to produce outcomes within tight temporal deadlines. This offers fresh challenges to research practice, including ethnographic research, which is traditionally based on long-term engagement in the field. Th...

We report on a study undertaken with an Australian in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinic to understand IVF patients' and reproductive donors' perceptions of oocyte (egg) donation for stem cell research. Such perspectives are particularly valuable because IVF patients form a major recruitment group for oocyte donation for research, and because patient...

Purpose This paper aims to present evidence for regarding reflexive practice as the crux of patient safety in tertiary hospitals. Reflexive practice buttresses safety because it is the precondition for flexible systematization – that is, the process that involves frontline clinicians in designing, redesigning and flexibly enacting care processes....

Emergency clinicians undertake boundary-work as they facilitate patient trajectories through the Emergency Department (ED). Emergency clinicians must manage the constantly-changing dynamics at the boundaries of the ED and other hospital departments and organizations whose services emergency clinicians seek to integrate. Integrating the care that di...

Drawing on work done in the area of health services research, this article outlines a view of discourse analysis (DA) that approaches discourse as a co-accomplished process involving researcher and research-participant. Without losing sight of the analytical-critical-reflexive moments that have typified discourse analytical endeavours, this article...

This research examines the power relations between the researcher, clinicians, the video camera and its footage in two innovative methodologies called ‘video ethnography’ and ‘video-reflexivity’. These methodologies have successfully facilitated clinician-learning and clinician-led practice redesign in Australian hospitals. Yet, to date, the litera...

In this article, we outline a study method with which structural changes to clinical communication were achieved within a local intensive care unit (ICU). The study method involved in-depth, round-the-clock observation, interviewing, and video filming of how intensivists conducted their practices, as well as showing selected footage to the clinicia...

In this article, we argue that homogenising discussions of medical dominance on the meta-level of professions do not fully capture the complexity that characterises current clinical care in multidisciplinary health care teams. We illustrate this through an empirical study of a multidisciplinary team attempting to enact their work in a clinically de...

Since their accreditation as a professional specialty in 1985, lactation consultants have grown in number and prominence in maternity care. In North America and Australia, breastfeeding management is now a domain increasingly presided over by certified experts. This article explores the way in which this speciality has established a distinctive ide...

Since the 1990s, Australian lactation consultants (LCs) have grown in prominence within institutions that have, as their overarching philosophy, a medico-scientific framework. LCs working in hospitals and community based centres negotiate a difficult path [1]. The LC in Australia combines the potentially conflicting maternalist philosophy which emp...