Magnolia Cardona

Dr Magnolia Cardona is a geriatrics and gerontology researcher with a passion for minimising healthcare harm near the end of life and reducing low-value care. She is affiliated with the Institute for Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University and is a conjoint academic at Gold Coast University Hospital.

For the past five years she has led a program of research to improve end-of-life care for patients, families and health professionals. Central to this is the development, implementation and validation of a checklist for identifying terminal patients and facilitating doctor's conversations with patients and families about end-of-life care preferences.

In consultation with doctors, nurses and health service consumers she continues to raise awareness of the need for early identification of the dying journey through use of objective prognostic criteria, decision aids, and open disclosure with older patients and their families or informal caregivers.

A/Prof Cardona has a background in Medicine from Latin America with Australian postgraduate qualifications in Public Health (MPH) and Applied Epidemiology (Grad Dipl Appl Epid and PhD). She has worked with international aid agencies, at State Health Departments and Universities. Her research interests are patient safety, end-of-life care, health services research, health program evaluation, chronic disease prevention (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer), international health, pharmacoepidemiology and evidence-based health policy.