Dept. Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Honorary Clinical Associate Professor Brenda Button began her career in Respiratory Medicine Physiotherapy in 1990 at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. The Royal Children's Hospital has one of the largest pediatric Cystic Fibrosis Units internationally. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 1999 undertaking practice changing research on the effects of head down tilted physiotherapy on infants, children & adolescents with cystic fibrosis. In 1999 she commenced employment at the Alfred Hospital in the Department of Respiratory Medicine working in the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Unit, managing around 370 adult CF patients. She continued research in adults with CF pre- and post-lung transplant which resulted in a change in medical practice in the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux. Other research interests have been in women and men with COPD & CF and urinary incontinence; the use of hypertonic saline in CF and non-CF bronchiectasis; exercise prescription and the usefulness of the exercise capacity tests including the recent development of the Alfred STEP Test (A-STEP) a peer review published incremental maximal step test for people with CF aged 10 years and upwards including adults across the lifespan. This is an alternative user-friendly field test to CPET; adherence to physiotherapy and its outcomes together with musculoskeletal pain & its management in CF. She has recently been the lead in the development of the new recently published short form patient reported outcome measure, the Alfred Wellness Score (AWESCORE) which is being widely used nationally and internationally. She is well-published in internationally recognized peer review journals with over 50 publications and is a regular reviewer for numerous high impact peer review journals.She supervises Masters and PhD research students at Monash University and is an examiner of Masters and Doctoral theses. She has been successful in being awarded numerous research grants. She is an accredited Airway Clearance Therapy Instructor with the International Physiotherapy Group for CF having studied with the developers of all the modern airway clearance techniques in Europe during the past 20 years and has been on the Faculty as an instructor of future accredited therapists. She is regularly invited to co-instruct the Airway Clearance Therapy Course at the NACFC & the European CF Conference. She was awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship travelling to eight international centres in Belgium, Germany, France, the USA and Canada to study the management of cystic fibrosis patients on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) as a bridge to lung transplantation. She is an inaugural member of the 2022 Board of the European Cystic Fibrosis Society Physiotherapy Special Interest Group who will be launching at the ECFC Conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in June 2022. She has been an annual attendee and a regular presenter at the NACFC since 1996.
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM ET
Thursday, November 3, 2022
9:45 AM – 11:45 AM ET