Dr John Hurley

Dr John Hurley is an Associate Professor of Nursing with Southern Cross University and a credentialed mental health nurse and therapist helping young people at headspace Mid North Coast, New South Wales. His areas of academic and researching interest include: effective mental health nursing, emotional intelligence, young people’s mental health and workplace bullying. His teaching and learning interest reflect these areas of research but also include health leadership, workforce development and post graduate curriculum design.

Dr Hurley has accumulated over 30 years’ experience as a mental health practitioner through developing and leading psychiatric crisis services in both Australia and the United Kingdom and as a qualified gestalt psychotherapist and problem solving counsellor.  He has worked passionately to provide mental health care within least restrictive environments and is currently advising into the ‘Partners in Recovery’ initiative in Northern New South Wales.

In completing his PhD study in 2011 on the influence of emotional intelligence (EI) on the identity formation of mental health nurses, Dr Hurley commenced a stream of research and academic writing on the topic of EI with the most recent related book focusing on emotions within school settings and mental well-being.

Through clinical experiences at headspace Dr Hurley forged an interest in and is currently conducting research into the impact of bullying into mental health problems in young people and the role of emotional resilience and EI in the mitigation of the bullying.

Dr Hurley predominantly works within the qualitative approaches of phenomenology and social constructionism as well as the multi-method approach of realistic evaluation. Recently relevant projects include funded research for the Scottish Government utilising realistic evaluation methodology on health services within police holding cells, a high school based realistic evaluation on the impact of mentoring to mitigate bullying for vulnerable students and a qualitative study on reducing stigma for young people with mental illness.

Dr Hurley has multiple international publications in peer reviewed journals and texts and has numerous international conference presentations.