UQ speech pathology researcher giving critically ill patients a voice wins 3MT

A PhD candidate whose research is giving a voice back to critically ill patients has won the University of Queensland’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) final.

Anna-Liisa Sutt, a speech pathologist at Prince Charles Hospital and a UQ School of Medicine researcher, won both the overall and people’s choice awards for her presentation “Dying to Talk.”
Runner-up was Thisun Piyasena from the UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, whose presentation was titled “Taming the chimera.”
Ms Sutt said her research was inspired by patients in intensive care units left voiceless by breathing tubes for ventilation.
“These vulnerable patients were desperate to communicate but were unable to talk because there was no air movement through their voice box,” she said.
“A speaking valve existed that could give them back their voice, but was not being widely used due to concerns that it could be harmful to patients’ lungs.
“My research showed that patients who used the speaking valve had better lung function, and it is now being used at Prince Charles Hospital.”

Ms Sutt is supervised by Professor John Fraser from UQ and Dr Petrea Cornwell from Griffith University.
3MT is a globally recognised competition developed by UQ.
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Find out more about the UQ speech pathology program. Contact OzTREKK’s Australian Speech Pathology Schools Admissions Officer Krista McVeigh at krista@oztrekk.com.