The ILC became incorporated as an Association under law in South Australia in November 2022. Elections were held in June 2023 to form the first Management Committee who serve as the peak governing structure within the ILC Inc. for a two-year period to June 2025.
The ILC Inc. Management Committee has specific responsibilities to ensure the ILC operates within the rules of the Association as detailed in the Constitution. This scope includes responsibility for all governance matters, finance, and human resources of the Association.
The ILC Management Committee consists of up to nine people, with nominations open to all financial members of the ILC Inc. Prior to the AGM in 2025, Members will be invited to nominate to serve on the ILC Inc. Management Committee for a two-year term.
The Management Committee is supported by the Executive Manager and ILC Support Team.
ILC ANNUAL REPORT
The ILC Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held on 17th June 2025 during the Annual International Conference in Italy. An annual general meeting is a held once a year that all ILC members are invited to attend.
You are welcome to read the full Annual Report for the ILC here. The report covers the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
The ILC commenced trading as an independent Association in April 2023, after transitioning away from its host of five years, Flinders University. The ILC end of its first full financial year is 31 March 2025.
Professor Alison Kitson
Australia
Professor Alison Kitson RN, BSc (Hons) DPhil, FRCN, FAAN, FAAHMS is an internationally recognised nursing leader, and translational research scientist. Her abiding passion continues to be around strengthening the evidence base for person-centred fundamental care, something that is essential to keep us healthy and well, and yet is poorly defined, understood and researched. The International Learning Collaborative (ilccare.org) was co-founded by Professor Kitson in 2008 to address this gap. She has served as the Chair of the ILC since 2023 when it became a formal membership organisation.
Alison is known globally for her work on developing, testing and refining the integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services Framework (or i-PARIHS Framework). This implementation framework has been widely and successfully used to enable research evidence to be put into everyday practice globally. She has published over 300 peer reviewed articles and book chapters in top nursing and translational science journals and is ranked in the top 2% of most cited researchers in her field in the world.
Alison has a distinguished career as an executive and thought leader, academic and policy expert in nursing and health care in the UK and Australia. She served as Vice President and Executive Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University South Australia from 2017-2024 and Foundation Director of the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University from 2019-2024. In 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science (AAHMS) and in 2022 she was awarded a Distinguished Matthew Flinders Professorship from Flinders University. She has several international and Australian visiting professorships and two honorary doctorates from Sweden and Denmark. In 2025 she was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) Research Hall of Fame for her transformational research in person-centred fundamental care and knowledge translation.
Dr Devin Carr
Chief Nursing Officer, Maine Medical Center, US
Devin Carr is Chief Nursing Officer at Maine Medical Center (MMC), leading the medical center’s Magnet-Recognized nursing team. Devin joined MMC in 2020 from the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, a Magnet-designated hospital, where he served as the chief nursing officer for one of the nation’s leading medical centers. Prior to his work at the University of Michigan, Devin served as Administrative Director of the Surgery and Transplant Patient Care Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a three-time Magnet-designated facility in Tennessee.
Devin has more than 30 years of experience in healthcare in a variety of clinical, academic, and leadership roles. He has collaborated across multiple enterprises to improve patient satisfaction scores, reduce risk and harm, and strengthen regulatory compliance readiness. Devin earned his DNP from Concordia University Wisconsin, an MSN from Clarkson College, and a BSN from Middle Tennessee State University.
Professor Tiffany Conroy
Professor of Nursing in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University. Director of Nursing and Midwifery Research for Southern Adelaide Local Health Network
Professor Conroy (RN, BN, MNSc, PhD, FACN) leads an internationally regarded team actively researching the influence of fundamental care delivery on patient outcomes and how care providers can be supported to provide person centred fundamental care. She is an experienced external facilitator for multi component interventions targeting mobility, nutrition and cognitive engagement for the prevention of hospital acquired delirium.
Professor Conroy’s research expertise includes the fundamentals of nursing care; knowledge translation; evidence-based practice; and the methodology and conduct of systematic and scoping reviews. Her substantial and sustained research impact has local and international significance and has been cited over 3600 times. In 2024 Professor Conroy was recognised in the World’s Top 2% of Researchers by the Stanford University Global Rankings.
Dr Getty Huisman-de Waal
Associate Professor, Radboud University Medical Center, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, IQ Healthcare, The Netherlands
Getty (PhD, FEANS) is a senior researcher / lecturer at the Scientific Institute for Quality of Healthcare (IQ healthcare) of the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She has a Bachelor of Nursing from HAN University of Applied Science, a Master in Nursing Science from the University of Maastricht, and a PhD in Medical Science from Radboud University. She has worked as a gastro enterology nurse in hospital for more than 10 years. Since 2010 she has worked in the areas of teaching and research. Her research activities and interests include the Fundamentals of Care, and the influence of daily nursing interventions on nurse sensitive outcomes. Recently, she developed a Dutch list of 66 do-not-do recommendations for nurses in all care settings. In her current position she is highly engaged with PhD supervision, (inter)national research projects, and research management.
Dr Jenny Parr
Chief Nurse and Director of Patient and Whaanau Experience, Counties Manukau District Health Board, New Zealand
Jenny commenced as Chief Nurse and Director of Patient and Whaanau Experience at Counties Manukau Health in January 2017. Prior to this, Jenny held several senior nursing, professional and management roles over two decades, both in New Zealand and in England. She was Executive Director of Nursing and Patient Experience at Kingston Hospital NHS Trust from 2010-2013 and was appointed to the Health Quality Safety Commission Board in late 2019. As Chief Nurse and Director of Patient and Whaanau Experience, Jenny is working to bring the expertise around patient experience, standards, and safety together to create a whole of system patient experience within Counties Manukau Health. As a Registered Nurse and qualified midwife with a Doctorate in Health Science, her research involves the relationship between leadership, fundamentals of care, and Maori centred models of care, and creating clinical academic career pathways for nurses.
Associate Professor Åsa Muntlin
Head of Research, Department of Emergency Care, Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden
Associate Professor, Adjunct Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Uppsala University, Sweden
Adjunct Associate Professor, College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS), Flinders University, Australia
Åsa has specialist training in emergency care and extensive clinical and research experience in emergency nursing. Her current research areas include health services research, pain management, emergency care, patient experiences, knowledge translation and fundamentals of care. Åsa was the inaugural recipient of the University of Adelaide School of Nursing Eleanor Harrald Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, working with Professor Alison Kitson on the fundamentals of care research program. She is the Co-Principal Investigator and coordinator of a joint fundamental of care research program between Sweden and Australia and is involved in different projects through the Nordic Health Research and Innovation Networks and the Swedish Society of Nursing. She is also involved in teaching fundamentals of care to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Associate Professor Karleen Thornton
College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University
Karleen is a Teaching Specialist – Academic at Flinders University within the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. She has a Bachelor of Nursing (Flinders University), Master of Nursing (University of South Australia), Master of Education – Adult (University of South Australia) and a Doctorate of Education (University of South Australia). Karleen has worked within the South Australian public health sector for 37 years, of which over 20 years has been focussed on nursing and midwifery education where she has held Nursing leadership positions with a focus on quality care delivery through targeted education for nursing and midwifery staff. Karleen joined Flinders University in 2022 as a Teaching Specialist within the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and has been instrumental in ensuring Fundamentals of Care is embedded across the Bachelor of Nursing program and has been involved in teaching fundamentals of care to undergraduate nursing students.
Nely Amaral
Director of Quality and Practice for Sinai Health System
Nely is currently the Vice President of Quality, Patient Experience, and Awards of Distinction at Sinai Health, where she also serves as the Magnet Program Director for Mount Sinai Hospital which is the only hospital in Canada to achieve Magnet designation and distinction. Under Nely’s leadership, the organization successfully achieved Magnet re-designation in 2021 and is actively pursuing a 2025 re-designation. Magnet is a prestigious, voluntary recognition by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) that highlights excellence in patient care and is one of the highest honors a healthcare organization can receive.
In her role, Nely’s portfolio includes Accreditation, Health Equity, Patient Relations, Interpreter Services, and leadership of complex quality reviews. She plays a pivotal role in advancing a culture of continuous improvement and patient safety across the organization.
With over 30 years of experience at Sinai Health, Nely has held progressively senior leadership roles, building on her strong foundation of front-line clinical experience in the NICU. She is a recognized champion of transformational leadership, consistently fostering a culture of curiosity, innovation, and excellence. Her approach emphasizes continuous improvement, reflective practice, and the integration of best practices across clinical and operational domains.
Nely is also a 2016 graduate of the Veterans Affairs Quality Scholars (VAQS) Fellowship Program, proudly becoming the first nurse in Canada to complete the program. She now contributes to the development of future leaders as Co-Director and Faculty for the VAQS program through the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (C-QuIPS)
Professor Andreia Jorge Silva da Costa
Department of Community Health Nursing
Lisbon School of Nursing
PhD Nursing, Ms Public Health, Ms Community Nursing
Full Professor at Nursing School of Lisbon (ESEL)
Coordinator of the Nursing Research, Innovation and Development Centre of Lisbon (CIDNUR), the research unit of ESEL
Department of Community Nursing
Member of the Scientific Council at ESEL
Vice President of the Management Council at ESEL
Member of Nursing PhD Scientific Committee at the University of Lisbon
Nursing professor since 2004 with experience in health policies.
Fellow and Boad Member of the European Academy of Nursing Science
Member of Sigma Theta Tau Internacional, Capítulo Phi Xi
National and International Focal point for different subjects such as Ageing, Health Literacy and Non-Communicable Diseases.
Part of several international working groups namely Health Systems Performance Assessment to European Commission.
Researcher at Environment Health Institute Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon.
Author and co-author of several scientific articles.