Shampa Sinha

Shampa Sinha is a palliative care doctor, passionate about improving access to timely and quality palliative care services for the elderly in aged care settings with the aim of enhancing their comfort and wellbeing and ensuring they spend their last days of life in their preferred place of death. In 2022, Shampa was the first palliative care doctor tasked with implementing the Tasmanian Government’s Comprehensive Palliative Care in Aged Care programme. Working in collaboration with GPs, care managers, nursing and other staff involved in the care of residents of aged care facilities, Shampa provided outreach specialist palliative care services to residents of aged care facilities in Southern Tasmania. She was nominated as a finalist in the category of Outstanding Palliative Care Professional in Palliative Care Tasmania’s 2022 Awards.

She has previously volunteered in health projects in the Dominican Republic and India and has a keen interest in indigenous health. In 2024, she will be working for six months in Alice Springs to provide palliative care to Indigenous Australians.

Shampa took the scenic route to medicine via previous careers as an Australian diplomat in Canberra and Mexico and in public health and evaluation at the World Bank in Washington DC. Apart from her medical degree from the University of Notre Dame, she has degrees in economics and law from UTAS. She received a Sasakawa Young Leaders’ Fellowship to undertake graduate studies in international development and health at Princeton. She is also an award-winning writer with publications in the Poetry Society (India) and Iowa Writer’s Workshop anthologies and is currently working on a novel.

The Churchill Fellowship will enable her to explore innovative models of palliative care service delivery in aged care settings around the world and help inform her future work in the provision of palliative care in Australia.