Peter O'Meara

I am currently employed at the Monash University Centre for Rural Health on several research projects, including 'Urgent Care in Rural Towns' and 'Evaluation of Moe's After Hours Medical Service'. Before then I was with rural Ambulance Services throughout Victoria in both operational and senior management positions where I worked on the development of a resource allocation formula. Out of these experiences a PhD topic began to take shape.

I chose to become a postgraduate research student at UNSW because of the willingness and ability of the School of Health Services Management to accommodate my needs as an off-campus student. The School was also willing to allow me to undertake research in a new field in which there are few experts in Australia. Being a BHA graduate from UNSW was another factor in my decision.

Under Jeffrey Braithwaite's supervision I've developed a theoretical framework and mapped out an approach to my research, selected a sample of forty ambulance branch stations and defined my research objectives. These involve determining valid benchmarks for service delivery, highlighting comparative allocative variations, providing an evaluation framework for rural ambulance services and determining the feasibility of the models examined in rural contexts.

Phone and email are the main communication channels for supervision and it is working well, but the chance to meet up with my supervisor over a convivial lunch on a recent trip to Sydney was a welcome highlight.