Van Aswegen, Heleen

Heleen van Aswegen is Associate-Professor in Physiotherapy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She graduated with BSc (Physiotherapy) and MSc (Physiotherapy) degrees from the University of the Free State in 1992 and 1997 respectively. She worked as a clinical physiotherapist in South Africa and the United Kingdom before joining the Physiotherapy department at Wits University in 2002 where she teaches cardiopulmonary physiotherapy at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Heleen graduated with PhD at Wits University (2008) for a thesis titled The effect of penetrating trunk trauma and mechanical ventilation on the recovery of adult survivors after hospital discharge. Her research interest is cardiopulmonary physiotherapy specifically in the fields of critical care and trauma. In the last five years she published 22 articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Physiotherapy, Clinical Rehabilitation, European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery and Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. She was an invited speaker at Critical Care Society of South Africa Congresses 2014 and 2015, presented research papers at several WCPT and World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine congresses and is editor of a book titled Cardiopulmonary Physiotherapy in Trauma: An Evidence-based Approach published in 2015 by Imperial College Press.