Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Charity Foundation Professorship in Nursing

First established in 1995 with 42 students enrolled in a four-year full-time Bachelor of Nursing programme, the Department of Nursing Studies at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) was renamed the School of Nursing in 2010, and has evolved into a fully-fledged nursing centre that plays a significant role in education, research, and knowledge exchange. Its mission is to produce nursing leaders for the community by providing a diversified and holistic education through an innovative, interdisciplinary and internationalised curriculum that responds to changing health needs. By 2017, enrolment had risen nearly ten-fold to 412 students, who were admitted to a range of different undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Professor Lin Chia-Chin joined HKU in 2017 as Head and Professor of the School of Nursing, and holds the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Charity Foundation Professorship in Nursing. She is a recognised expert in cancer nursing and palliative care.

Her work focusing on the physical activity in lung cancer patients has identified the attitudes, beliefs and preferences for physical activity among patients. She has demonstrated that home-based walking programmes can lead to improvements in circadian rhythms, mental health outcomes, and overall sleep quality. Following her work and papers in this field, clinicians in Taipei have introduced exercise counselling programmes for lung cancer patients as part of their clinical practice. In November 2016, Professor Lin’s research gained international exposure when she was interviewed by Reuters on her findings.

Professor Lin received her BSN from Taipei Medical University (TMU), and her MSN and PhD in Nursing and Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More recently, she diversified her skills and knowledge in management through earning an EMBA from National Taiwan University.

Professor Lin was the youngest nursing academic in Taiwan to earn the title of Professor, and over the past 23 years she has established herself as a leading academic, devoting herself to providing global leadership in healthcare education and research. She won numerous accolades for her research, received multiple teaching awards from her time at TMU, and was selected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in the US in 2016.

With her expertise in the management of cancer symptoms and palliative care, Professor Lin served as Chairperson of the committee that developed the first National Cancer Pain Management Reference Guidelines for Palliative Care in Taiwan. She is also a Board Member of and Consultant to foundations that promote end of life care in Taiwan. She is a Council Member of numerous professional communities that provide educational training for oncology and palliative care nurses. Most recently, she founded the Long-Term Care Nursing Association in Taiwan.

As a global healthcare educator and researcher, Professor Lin exemplifies leadership in her current role as Head of the School of Nursing at HKU and as the immediate past Dean of the College of Nursing, TMU. She successfully transformed the College into an institution with a focus on globalisation and research, and it is now ranked first in Asia according to the 2017 Academic Ranking of World Universities in Nursing.

She has authored more than 130 papers published in international peer-reviewed journals. Professor Lin has also served as a member of the editorial boards of a number of internationally renowned journals.