About
Michelle has been the Interstitial Lung Disease and Pulmonary Hypertension Clinical Nurse Specialist at Waikato Hospital, New Zealand since 2019. Michelle has been nursing for over 30 years, has a Masters in Clinical Nursing Science and is an RN prescriber. Michelle’s role was a new position when she took over and she has greatly developed the role. She is based in a tertiary hospital where she runs outpatient clinics alongside the ILD physician Harry Gallagher. Michelle also runs clinics in local rural hospitals and provides support to the nursing staff in more remote hospitals and those in other ILD/PH nursing positions around NZ. She does ward reviews on patients and provides support with discharge planning and end of life care, including home visits alongside Hospice nurses and GP’s. She works closely with the respiratory research team at her hospital to support ILD/PH patients that are on clinical trials.
Michelle is a foundation member of the Australasian ILD Nurse Alliance Steering Committee and one of the nurse representatives on the Australasian ILD Registry committee.
In 2024-2025, Michelle took a 12-month career break. She chose to spend the majority of this time in Australia getting back to her nursing roots and further her knowledge. Her Australian placements included time at Canberra Hospital in the Acute CCU. She enjoyed refreshing her cardiac knowledge and came across a few ILD and PH patients in this time. Following her stint in Canberra, Michelle hoped to go to Queensland and work in a rural/community setting.