Prof Dianne Stephens completed her Anaesthesia and Intensive Care specialist training and moved to Darwin in 1998 as the first ICU Specialist in the Northern Territory and inaugural Director of Royal Darwin Hospital Intensive Care Unit.
As Director of ICU at RDH from 1998 to 2016, she provided leadership in best practice clinical care for the critically ill of the Northern Territory.
In 2002 Prof Stephens led the intensive care response to the Bali bombings and had oversight of the forward evacuation through medical retrieval assets from across the country to burns centres around Australia.
Her research interests include sepsis, melioidosis, critical illness and renal disease, Indigenous critical illness outcomes, communicating well with patients and families, and disaster medicine.
In 2017 she moved into the role of Medical Director of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) drawing on her disaster medicine experience with the Bali Bombings, deployment into Iraq with the RAAF, disaster medicine training and experience with Cyclone Winston when she lived in Fiji.
In addition to disaster health capacity building work in the Pacific, Prof Stephens led the development of postgraduate courses in Aeromedical Retrieval and Health Emergency Preparedness and Response as a partnership project between the NCCTRC and Charles Darwin University.
In January 2022 the CDU Menzies School of Medicine was established and Prof Stephens was appointed into the role of Foundation Dean whilst maintaining a role as Academic Partnerships lead with the NCCTRC.