VICDOC Autumn 2025 - Magazine - Page 11
A LO CA L L I V I N G L EG E N D
themselves. If we then look at the benefits
of providing breastmilk for your own child,
there’s the reduced incidence of respiratory
and gastrointestinal infections, and there’s
a lesser chance of developing diabetes in
children. For the women themselves, we
know it reduces the incidence of breast
cancer and uterine cancer, along with
multiple other benefits in later life.
Q4 / HOW CAN HEALTHCARE BE
IMPROVED FOR ALL AUSTRALIANS?
-
The GP system is in absolute crisis.
It concerns me that it’s very difficult to
find a bulk billing general practitioner,
and for families who have three or four
children, if you can’t find one, the cost of
seeing a GP can be prohibitive. Now, I’m
not blaming GPs for that, because they are
facing increasing costs and must manage
their businesses. They have been pushed to
the wall. But I observe that while families
seek consultations for acute medical
problems with GPs, there are a lot of times
where surveillance of chronic problems or
situations where growth and development
and well child surveillance is important, that
just isn’t possible for families in the current
financial climate. There is no Medicare
rebate for well child surveillance – that is
the role of the maternal and child health
system which is also stretched and limited
to very young children. The maternal and
child health system also does an amazing
job in their care for women and children;
it’s a fantastic resource that is very much
underappreciated. I would like to see some
consideration for well health surveillance; for
preventative health to be seen as important
as the management of disease – not just for
children, but for everyone in the population.
Q5 / DO YOU THINK WE NEED
A DAY TO CELEBRATE WOMEN?
-
Absolutely, yes. I’m all for celebrations! I
know we don’t have an international men’s
day, but I think International Women’s Day
is important. It’s a day when we take time
to remember and acknowledge ourselves and
those women around us; when we take the
time to say thank you and well done, because
I think we don’t do that often enough.
Recently my female colleagues arranged a
dinner for Mercy women neonatologists.
It was a lovely time to reflect that when I
joined the Mercy in 1999, I was the first
and only female paediatrician. Now there
are eight of us. That is my legacy. It’s hugely
rewarding to know that I have had an
influence on junior female doctors who’ve
then continued their career in paediatrics
or neonatology.
Q6 / HOW MANY BABIES DO YOU THINK
YOU’VE CARED FOR OVER THE YEARS?
-
We have about 1,500 babies a year through
the nursery at the Mercy, and between 150
and 200 of them are critically unwell in the
beginning and spend time in our intensive
care unit. If you look at a 25-year career of
that, it would be thousands, and it starts
to feel really special. I have a particular
family whose daughter who was born at
25 weeks’ gestation. She was a tiny little
thing, and she’s now graduated from
university and just been accepted into
medical school. She came and did some
workplace experience with me, which was
fantastic. It’s amazing for me to think that
somebody who was born as premature
as that who I cared for is now going to
embark on her own medical career.
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