Mary Ditton
Lecturer, Faculty of The Professions, School of Health
Qualifications
MB BS, DPM, MBA, DHSM
Contact
| Email: | mary.ditton@une.edu.au |
| Room: | Pat O'Shane Building (C13) |
| Phone: | 02 6773 3668 (or +61 2 6773 3668 overseas) |
| Fax: | 02 6773 2755 |
| Mobile: | 0434 954 881 |
Hello there
I’m Mary Ditton and welcome to my little space in the School of Health at University of New England.
I work in the Health Management team in the School of Health and I participate in the other areas as well including, Nursing, Gerontology, Counselling and Health Sciences. Consequently my teaching responsibilities cover a number of the subject areas in these disciplines.
Because I was a medical practitioner for 20 years I entered academia as a second career. I did a Masters of Business Administration at University of Southern Queensland in 1999 and thoroughly enjoyed all the new areas that I had to explore with those studies. I came to UNE and completed my Doctorate of Health Services Management in 2005. Although Doctoral studies are challenging I leant a great deal along the way.
I have just returned from study leave in semester 1 2008 during which I wrote a book about what academic’s contribute to the public good. This grew out of my thesis and includes two published articles from it. One of the articles of which I am quite proud deals with the health effects of social relationships in the workplace. Publishers are reviewing this book now. The tertiary education sector is an interesting area to research because of all the policy and workforce challenges that it faces. Consequent to this, I am actively involved in the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) and I am on the education faculty and also on the health care interest group.
I have travelled to Thailand seven of eight times over the last few years with various research projects into primary health care in the rural areas, developing teaching curricula for the rural health workforce, and studying the plight of the migrants from Burma in Thailand. The later project area will probably occupy me for a long time, as poverty and migration are very significant international public health issues. I am presently writing up a study on the Millennium Development Goals and the migrants from Burma. I have colleagues in Churlalongkorn University and Assumption University in Bangkok and good rapport with Non-Government Organisations that offer good advice with this research.
Cross cultural teaching and research is so much part of our lives with globalisation. As familiar as multiculturalism is, intercultural exchanges are important to recognise and study in order to come to grips with cultural myths and extend our understanding. I did a small study of postgraduate students from several different cultures and I was confronted with difficulty that students had in understanding lecturers. I found that these same students learnt more quickly when they were in multicultural groups as they all tried to grapple with difficult concepts in their courses.
I am a keen teacher and I am very interested in talking to you about any of your education enquiries. I am always willing to take on postgraduate students and help them with their Masters or Doctoral studies.
Mary Ditton lectures in Health Management.