Rate My Professor Cathy Haigh

Associate Professor Cathy Haigh serves as Director of Monash Rural Health Gippsland and Deputy Director and Year 4C Academic Coordinator at Monash Rural Health: Latrobe Valley and West Gippsland, School of Rural Health, Monash University. Originally from Ireland, she received her education at Trinity College, Dublin University, and the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Prior to joining Monash University in July 2008, she held academic positions at the University of Strathclyde and King's College London. In her role at Monash, she teaches into the Health Enhancement unit in Year 3B of the MBBS program, Medicine of the Mind in Year 4C, and coordinates the Patient Safety teaching module (MED5102) for Year 5D students based at Traralgon.

Haigh's academic interests center on learning and assessment within the clinical workplace, the development of clinical reasoning skills among medical students, and patient safety initiatives. She actively contributes to the academic community as a member of the Latrobe Regional Hospital's Human Research Ethics Committee and as an assessor for Australian Research Council grants since 2016. In June 2023, Associate Professor Haigh received the Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, acknowledging her sustained excellence and leadership in rural medical education. This accolade highlights her dedication to learner-centred pedagogies, simulation-based learning for clinical skills, communication, and teamwork, as well as her efforts in fostering collaborations with local health services and training providers to deliver high-quality clinical placements.

Her scholarly output includes peer-reviewed articles such as "Bone health in rural Australia: a mixed methods study of consumer needs" published in Archives of Osteoporosis in 2023, "Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic" in 2023, and "In search of rainbows: Looking for signs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex culturally sensitive general practices in Gippsland, Victoria" in the Australian Journal of Rural Health in 2019. Additional contributions encompass conference posters like "Focussing on the Positives: Learning and opportunities on Rural Placement" (2017) and peer review services for Monash University Publishing and the Medical Education Journal. Through these endeavors, Haigh significantly impacts medical education in rural Australia by enhancing student preparation for practice.