Rate My Professor Annabel Axford

Annabel Axford is a Lecturer in Nursing at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, College of Health, within the UniSA Clinical and Health Sciences Academic Unit at Adelaide University’s City East Campus. As a registered nurse and midwife, her professional career spans diverse roles and settings from local to national levels, including clinical practice in acute and community environments, rural and regional areas, management, health promotion, primary health care, mental health services, workforce development, and education. She completed a Masters in Primary Health Care in 2008 and holds additional postgraduate certificates. In her academic role, Axford applies an inquiry-based learning framework to stimulate student curiosity, promote self-directed learning, and design authentic assessments that integrate perspectives from students, staff, and industry partners. She currently teaches courses such as NURS 2041 Mental Health Nursing, NURS 5157 Perinatal Mental Health for Health Professionals, NURS 5164 Best Practice in Adolescent Mental Health, and NURS 3045 Nursing Context of Practice: Primary Health Care. Beyond teaching, she works as a primary health care and health promotion mentor.

Axford’s research specializations encompass mental health and suicide prevention, primary health care, health promotion, ethical reflection in health promotion, developmental screening tools for adolescents related to mental health and alcohol and other drug use, dementia in correctional settings, perinatal mental health, and adolescent mental health. She is a member of the UniSA Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Research and Education Group. Her key publications include 'Introducing the "student and academic familiarity effect": nursing academic perspectives' (2025, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Journal, with R. Harvey and S. Gaston), 'Developmental screening tools in adolescent period in relation to mental health and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use' (2024, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Journal, with P. Cooper), 'Building workforce capacity for ethical reflection in health promotion: a practitioner’s experience' (2015, Health Promotion Journal of Australia, with D. Carter), and 'Re-framing and re-thinking dementia in the correctional setting' (2018, chapter in Cognitive Disorders, with S. Gaston).