Our Founder
Meet Caitlin Delaney
For our founder, the vision of CareFully is both professional and personal. Caitlin has been a healthcare provider, and a patient – and these crucial dual perspectives are brought to bear on the outlook and goals of the business. A passionate clinical scientist, Caitlin blends detailed analysis with a highly relational style.
“From my experience as a patient, to the human centred design research I have done - and let’s not forget all the patients I have encountered in my career - one thing is resoundingly clear: Care matters. More than you think. I am an advocate for giving patients a voice and changing the way the world looks at care, for the better.”
With over 20+ years’ experience in the healthcare profession, primarily as an IVF scientist, Caitlin has a profound and broad knowledge of the healthcare industry. She has managed and established leading IVF and Sperm Donor clinics, in Australia and Europe. Beginning her career at the prominent IVF clinic Genea (formerly Sydney IVF), she found a setting where importance was placed on both technical and soft skills, and the delivery of quality of patient care was paramount. Taking this to heart, Caitlin has continued to believe in the significance of delivering a high standard of patient care, with an understanding of the vital role that compassion plays in the continuum of care. She went on to work as an embryologist at another world leading IVF Centre, the noted ARGC (Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre) in London, and set up Edinburgh’s first private IVF clinic, including a sperm donor clinic. Eventually returning to Sydney and Genea, Caitlin managed the embryology team and lab as Embryology Team Leader. She then turned to project management, managing high stake projects such as Grow by Genea™, an application which enables patients to view their embryo as it develops in the lab – a first for Australia.
A healthcare professional, and a patient
Enhancing the consumer experience in the healthcare sphere has been Caitlin’s passion throughout her career. This was placed in the spotlight when she found herself on the other side of the bed. Caitlin’s mother-in-law passed away suddenly; the result of poor communication, and poor patient care. That outcome would have been very different, had she received compassionate patient-centred care, and Caitlin vowed to make a difference in the healthcare space following the tragedy. Sadly, before this goal was realized, Caitlin herself was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Faced with being ‘the patient’ herself, Caitlin was fortunate to be treated in a leading holistic oncology hospital, where patient-centred care was invariably the leading model of care. However she is aware that not all patients, such as her mother in law, receive such care. And just like that, CareFully was born.
Since her diagnosis, and following her recovery, Caitlin has been a vocal advocate for ovarian cancer patients – and for compassionate care in the industry as a whole. She has participated in numerous speaking engagements and media projects, including at Parliament House and on Studio 10. As a presenter and Sydney’s Regional Coordinator for ANZGOG’s Survivors Teaching Students, Caitlin continued to educate on the importance of care by sharing her story with medical and nursing students. She provided a patient voice - not only on how to diagnose ovarian cancer, but also on what ovarian cancer patients need when it comes to care. For Caitlin, it’s about resilience, both in the face of her diagnosis, but also imparting the power of this to patients and staff members.
After building and motivating highly-effective, successful teams during her career as a clinical scientist, combined with her personal healthcare journey, she founded CareFully to be groundbreaking. To train professionals in compassionate care and to raise the standard of healthcare so that all patients can expect to receive consistent, collaborative, and compassionate patient-centred care. A movement which is touching the lives of people everywhere.
Learning from research
Human Centred Design Is In Our DNA
November 2019 | Course provided by +Acumen and IDEO.org through NovoEd
True patient centred care is a great example of human centred design.
Always thirsty for knowledge, Caitlin is passionate about expanding her mindset and keeping up to date with the world of care. Her recently completed Human Centred design course provided an introduction to the methods and tools of human-centered design, while tackling a real-world design challenge.
The design challenge that CareFully tackled was: "How can we build compassionate communication tools to support people when speaking with cancer patients?"
“Compassionate care for me has been the ability of medical staff to really listen to my concerns and fears, and to re-assure when appropriate. It is always good to feel there is time to really talk things over.”