Sonja Maria

Sonja has a diverse background in emergency healthcare after working in ambulance services both nationally and internationally including various roles as a paramedic and education management. Sonja’s main area of interests are in policy development and evidence based guidelines for clinicians in the health field.  Sonja has proven skills in project management, research and leadership. During the past four years Sonja was the lead of the paramedic team as Discipline Leader at Charles Sturt University and has been very busy with managing the course which has gone through a recent review and subsequent successful reaccreditation with the Council of Ambulance Authorities. In 2017 she won the Faculty of Science Leadership Award for her abilities to project manage the team through several successful endeavours. This includes the successful development of the prestigious Masters of Paramedicine course which began in 2018 and the online course for undergraduate study of Paramedicine. Her current projects include the development of the Australasian Paramedic Clinical Guidelines and completing her PhD.

Sonja is currently completing a PhD which investigates guideline use by paramedics. She is due for completion in 2019. Alongside study, Sonja has also been involved in several research projects over recent years. These notably included
- Leading a research team to research and establish additional placements for health science students through a NSW Interdisciplinary Clinical Training Networks grant for $100,000
- Publications on paramedic practice in peer reviewed journals (with four currently pending in 2018) see ResearchGate for specifics.
- Investigations into clinical placements and the use of new technologies (Comptracker) with fellow colleague Adam Diamond (CSU).
- An Australian wide research project with colleague Mark Colbeck (ACU) into the establishment of the Australasian Paramedic Practice Guidelines.

From a clinical perspective, Sonja’s research passion is in Paramedic Cardiology and she is also currently supervising honours students with research into cardiovascular disease.
Sonja is a member of the Workforce Wellness Research Unit, the Network of Australasian Paramedic Academics (NAPA), Australian and New Zealand College of Paramedicine (ANZCP), Paramedics Australasia (PA) and also jointly hosts TRIP Podcasts on Paramedicine.com with fellow colleague Marc Colbeck.

Sonja currently teaches into both the undergraduate and postgraduate courses at CSU. Her passion is cardiology and she has a special interest in the two subjects CLS300 – Advance Cardiology for Paramedics & APS501 – Advanced Cardiac Care. Sonja’s teaching style is engaging and interactive, she is very keen to use new technologies to assist students learning. Sonja has over 26K subscribers to her YouTube channel that hosts simulations of learning and videos that Sonja has made to demonstrate paramedic skills.