Rate My Professor Katrina Giskes

Associate Professor Katrina Giskes is a general practitioner and Research Fellow in the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney. Her comprehensive academic background includes a Bachelor of Health Science in Nutrition and Dietetics (Honours), a PhD in Public Health completed in 2003 which conducted the first population-based study in Australia to document socioeconomic inequalities in diet, a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Sydney in 2015, and Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (FRACGP). Prior to entering medicine, she worked for over ten years as a research fellow in public health in Australia and internationally, including holding an NHMRC Sidney Sax International Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2004 to 2008 at Erasmus University Rotterdam investigating socioeconomic health inequalities. She has lectured in research methods and nutrition and dietetics and supervised several PhD students to completion. Currently, she undertakes an academic research post through the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners while affiliated as a GP with the Ochre Health Network.

Dr Giskes specializes in research on patient self-screening for chronic conditions using digital technologies in primary care to support the preventive health capacity of general practitioners. She is a lead investigator in the BREATHE SMART project integrating self-screening tools for breathlessness into GP clinics and the AF-SELF SMART pilot study promoting atrial fibrillation screening in general practice. Her key publications encompass 'Screening for atrial fibrillation: The essential role of GPs' (Medicine Today, 2020), 'A protocol for atrial fibrillation self-screening in general practice' (NPJ Primary Care Respiratory Medicine, 2021), 'Staff acceptability and patient usability of a self-screening kiosk for atrial fibrillation' (Clinical eHealth, 2022), 'Increasing screening for atrial fibrillation in general practice: The AF-SELF SMART pilot study' (Medical Journal of Australia, 2023), and 'Time trends in stroke risk management among high-risk individuals with atrial fibrillation: analysis of an electronic health record database' (European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2024). She received the Dr Charlotte Hespe Research Award in 2020 for her contributions to primary care research aimed at reducing preventable strokes through early detection of asymptomatic atrial fibrillation.