DrSlavica Kochovska

Dr Slavica Kochovska is an Adjunct Research Fellow with IMPACCT (Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care through Clinical Research and Translation) at the University of Technology Sydney. 

Dr Kochovska is a Research Fellow in Palliative Care at Flinders University. She is also an Honorary Senior Fellow with the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong. She was the Inaugural Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative (PaCCSC) at IMPACCT, UTS.

Combining applied health research with an academic background in linguistics, Dr Kochovska leads a research program to improve the understanding of chronic breathlessness for people with life-limiting illnesses and their families and alleviate its impacts through better recognition, assessment and response in clinical practice.

Primary areas of research include symptom science, patient-clinician communication and the science of securing research consent in priority populations. Methodological expertise includes randomised controlled trials, population studies, qualitative and mixed-methods studies, systematic reviews, implementation science and quality improvement. 

Dr Kochovska leads a population study delineating the impact of chronic breathlessness on key quality of life domains (UTS Faculty of Health Seed Grant) and a qualitative study investigating how chronic breathlessness is discussed in clinical consultations (UTS Health Futures Development Grant). She co-led a scoping review investigating consumer perspectives on research participation for older people with impaired decision-making capacity (SPHERE Age and Ageing CAG Grant).

Dr Kochovska holds a Bachelor of Arts (Highest Honours) and Masters in Linguistics (First Class Honours) (University of Auckland, NZ) and a PhD in Linguistics (Rutgers University, USA). She was awarded the UTS Faculty of Health Inaugural Early Career Research Support Program 2020 and UTS Early Career Research Women Mentoring Pilot 2020.