MeDeFacts - UWA · 2017-10-04 · achieving its ambition to be a “top 50” university in the world by 2050. Our medical research is already world class and we are currently rated

Please be upstanding – a toast to the Medical School on its 60th anniversary and to all its alumni.

From its jubilant beginnings in 1957, when 15 students completed their first year of medicine, to last year’s total of 253 graduands, the Medical School has flourished.

Over the 60 years it has witnessed enormous talent and produced exceptional alumni, including a Nobel Laureate, ACs, AOs, AMs, Australian of the Year, Rhodes Scholars, world-renowned researchers, clinicians, teachers and administrators. Above all, it prides itself on its doctors who not only care for their patients, but about them, and give unstintingly of their time for their welfare in all arenas.

It is well known that the Medical School only exists because of the generosity of the West Australian public who dug deeply into their pockets from 1955 to raise funds to establish it. These included community organisations, industry groups, professional groups, individuals and many others. Rural communities entered into the spirit and many farmers pledged part of their wool cut or crop – and now, of course, the Medical School boasts an enviable Rural Clinical School with 14 country sites.

In this edition, we celebrate our alumni and the impact they have had on future generations of doctors, the health of the community and the progress of medicine. And UWA Pro Vice-Chancellor and Faculty Executive Dean, Professor Wendy Erber, casts a line into the future to see what the next 60 years might bring forth.

Previous editions of MeDeFacts can be viewed online at www.meddent.uwa.edu.au/news/medefacts

www.meddent.uwa.edu.au/news/medefacts

Health and Medical Sciences

MeDeFactswww.meddent.uwa.edu.auVolume 23 | Number 3 | September 2017

Students have been flocking into the newly revamped Medical and Dental Library following its opening on 6 September.

The vibrant and invigorated library welcomes UWA students and staff as well as alumni and members of the public.

The $7 million refurbished building provides a modern, student-focused space for study, teaching and learning and a new home for Health and Medical Sciences’ Faculty and library staff in the heart of the QEII campus. The renovation coincides with the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Medical School.

The stylish design includes a feature timber ceiling representing the human spine and elements of dentition-inspired collaborative tables. The project was a collaboration between the architectural firm Hames Sharley, the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, the University Library, Development and Alumni Relations, Campus Management, University IT, and student representatives.

The new library ground floor offers a technology-rich collaborative learning hub made up of a 120-seat e-learning suite, a seminar presentation room, bookable study booths and group study rooms. This level also includes new amenities, kitchen facilities and a student lounge. The main library service point has been designed to facilitate better student-staff interaction through a side-by-side model of support.

The ground floor also houses an Alumni Lounge with exclusive meeting and work space for graduates, donors and community partners who have played a huge role in first-rate teaching, research and practice.

The first floor has individual, silent study areas and access to the library’s core Health and Medical Sciences print collection. Also on this floor is a computer training room

with 20 dedicated PCs, after-hours meeting rooms and a combined workspace for both library and Faculty staff. New coded locker facilities are available on the ground and first floors.

On the second floor are the Dean’s office and Faculty staff offices.

Library Manager Ms Merrilee Albatis said students really valued a variety of learning spaces – thus the collaborative spaces on the ground floor and the individual study spaces on the first floor. “We are getting more students into our libraries than ever before. The Reid Library has seen a marked increase in the number of visitors since its refurbishment, proof that students are keen to meet, study and collaborate with each other in inspiring, technology-rich spaces.”

Come on in - and enjoy your learning

MBBS reunionsMBBS 1987 - 30 year reunion, 21 October at The Trustee in St George’s Terrace.

MBBS 1967 - 50 year reunion, 28 October lunch at the University Club in the formal dining room. Speaker: Clinical Professor Alex Cohen.

MBBS 1957 (intake year) - 60 year reunion, 11 November lunch at the University Club.

Please email UWA Alumni Relations at [email protected] for more information.

Photo: Top - Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean Professor Wendy Erber (left) with Vice-Chancellor Professor Dawn Freshwater at the information desk of the newly-refurbished Medical and Dental Library.

Photo: Middle - The student PC area on the ground floor.

Photo: Bottom - Bookable group study booths on the ground floor.

2 | MeDeFacts | Volume 23 Number 3 | September 2017

The Dean’s DiaryOn this 60th anniversary of the “University Medical School” we reflect on where we have come from and what we have achieved since it was established in 1957. I have been giving thought to the Medical School of the future.

We began with 25 students at the “University Medical School” to train the first home-grown doctors for the State. At that time there were four medical schools in Australia and 860 medical students; 60 years on these numbers have grown significantly and there are now 20 medical schools nationwide (three in WA) and 20,000 students! Our UWA medical program has changed from a six-year undergraduate MB BS degree with students entering directly from high school to a four-year postgraduate MD, admitting 240 students annually. This move to a graduate program has been a common trend nationally and internationally. Our curriculum includes the scientific basis of disease as well as clinical training in hospital and community practices both in the metropolitan area and in many regional locations.

Our Medical School has made some remarkable achievements over the first 60 years, graduating thousands of doctors (including a Nobel Laureate), making seminal medical discoveries and teaching the next generation of doctors. In that time society has changed considerably – the population of WA has trebled, we live in a global multicultural world and have seen a computer revolution. The average life expectancy has increased by 13 years, we know the full human genome, there is greater equality for women worldwide and there have been changes in our environment. None of these things could have been predicted 60 years ago.

Future medical educationWhat will medical education look like as we ponder the future? There will be change, but some things will remain the same. In 1900 Professor Bowditch of Harvard Medical School published an article in the Boston Medical Journal entitled “The Medical School of the Future”, in which he remarked that “the progress of medicine at the present time is so rapid that new points of view are constantly being secured, and it

is therefore not at all impossible that even at comparatively short intervals, new and valuable suggestions may be made both with regard to subjects to be taught and to methods to be employed in giving the instruction.” More than a century on, these words remain true. The subject matter has changed, as have the methods of instruction and assessment (though examinations remain to the student “a necessary evil”) but the principles remain. And so they will for medical students of the future. The style of teaching and learning may again change. In the 19th century medical education was largely as an apprenticeship. In the 20th century this was supplemented by textbook education. In the 21st century with global access to information and teachers, the mode of delivery will again change and the University will need to review what education is provided locally, and how.

Doctor-patient relationship is keyAnd how will we practise medicine in 2050? Medicine must continue to be a very human interaction: the doctor-patient relationship will remain as a key element of medical practice and health delivery. The care of the patient and their family will remain paramount and be central to the practice of medicine. The traditional methods of care, communication and compassion are important today and will continue so into the future. The growing costs of delivering health care may well see medical practice move away from hospitals and into the community, with doctors becoming members of inter-professional care teams. Our patients will be better informed through global access to information.

We will see and need to work with demographic and sociological changes. Children of today will grow up with more and better quality health knowledge and greater access to information than their parents. Early exposure to medical knowledge could lead to more young people desiring to study medicine, leading to entry to the program becoming even more competitive than currently. There will be new diseases, new challenges (e.g. antimicrobial resistance), new monitoring tools and treatments. Technological developments will lead to new investigative tools (some at the fingertips of the patient), non-invasive procedures and targeted therapeutics.

We are already moving to the use of telecommunication and digital tools to remotely diagnose illnesses. Instant communication and data transmission will increasingly have an impact in acute and life-threatening situations. Telemedicine will improve delivery of healthcare in rural and remote parts of our State and could lead to internationalisation of medical care.

By 2050 there will be 10 million Australians over 65 years of age – double the number of today. This demographic change will have a major impact on healthcare. There will be a greater focus on maintaining a healthy population and avoiding chronic conditions. The medical curriculum of tomorrow will see a greater focus on disease prevention, health promotion, rehabilitation and maintenance of wellbeing (both physical and mental) for the increased ageing of society.

Clinician-researchers of tomorrow Our medical students will be the clinician-researchers of tomorrow. They will make their own discoveries and inventions that will challenge current dogma and potentially change how we practise medicine. Our medical students will assist UWA in achieving its ambition to be a “top 50” university in the world by 2050. Our medical research is already world class and we are currently rated number 42 in the world in clinical medicine.

Medical knowledge and the health care system of tomorrow will differ from that of today. As we go forward we will need to continually monitor and modify our curriculum, teaching delivery and assessment to ensure our graduates are the best we can produce. I am confident that our UWA Medical School will deliver!

The UWA Medical School in 2050By Professor Wendy Erber, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean

MeDeFacts | Volume 23 Number 3 | September 2017 | 3

Choosing the path

that challengedA young neurologist, Dr Sasson (Sonny) Gubbay, was walking through the Royal Perth Hospital Paraplegic Unit in Shenton Park in 1966 when something caught his eye.

He was doing a ward round with unit director Dr George Bedbrook (later Sir George) and noticed that many of the paraplegics who were improving had a foot drop. He suggested to Dr Bedbrook that it was not due to paraplegia but because they had damaged their lateral popliteal nerve from pressure caused by lying still in bed so long.

“I proved it with electromyography and he was thrilled with that,” recalls Clinical Professor Gubbay, who then co-authored a paper with another neurologist and Dr Bedbrook and it was presented internationally.

Clinical Professor Gubbay had graduated in 1957, having been in the first class that returned from interstate to the University of WA to undertake the sixth and final year of the MBBS at the newly-established Medical School. The students had completed the first year of their degree in the pre-medical sciences also at UWA. Having topped the first year, Sasson Gubbay chose to go to the University of Adelaide because it had an excellent reputation and his friends were going there.

“When we were still in 5th year in Adelaide, many of us came back in our August holidays because we knew at that stage we were coming back for sixth year to Western Australia to start the Medical School,” he recounts. The students were invited by the then Dr Eric Saint, who was Head of the Clinical Research Unit at RPH, to attend a ward round during their holiday. “Just before the ward round started, we read in the newspaper that he’d been made the (Foundation) Professor of Medicine.”

All the consultants who were going to be medical teachers at the new Medical School were extremely enthusiastic, says Clinical Professor Gubbay. “I had some favourites like Professor (Rolf) ten Seldam who treated me and a couple of others as though he were a father.

Our alumni are a source of pride for the Medical School. UWA Pro Vice-Chancellor and Faculty Executive Dean, Professor Wendy Erber, has chosen six of them from across the decades to be featured here.

The articles, plus a brief CV of each of the six alumni, can be found also on the website www.medpharm.uwa.edu.au/60anniversary

“Eric Saint, we regarded him as a genius because he had a remarkable turn of phrase, a wonderful gift of language. And Dick Lefroy was a fantastic teacher, he was down to our level, he took his time and tried to make us understand.”

Clinical Professor Gubbay has fond memories of his role in 1957 as editor of the first medical students’ magazine, The Reflex, which included an article penned by him about his classmate, Mike McCall, a Rhodes Scholar that year.

He looks back happily on his career. “I wanted to do medicine all my life, even as a child, because my mother had so much respect for our general practitioner,” he explains.

The reason he chose neurology is a bit more off-beat. “I realised even in fourth year medicine that I wanted to be a physician and when I passed my membership exams, the MRACP, I felt very sufficient in every area except neurology. I wanted to be sufficient in every area and so neurology was a challenge. Also I was interested in the brain and how it worked.”

After training overseas in adult and paediatric neurology and neuropathology, including at Harvard Medical School, he returned to Perth. What followed was a remarkable career, remaining as a consultant for 50 years at both RPH and Princess Margaret Hospital for Children as well as maintaining a private practice, teaching and examining in the Faculty, and assessing grant applications. He was appointed Head of Neurology at RPH in 1977.

He has contributed enormously to the field of neurology including in the areas of stroke, migraine, epilepsy, and dyspraxia in children.

“I had the rare privilege of doing both adults and children during those 50 years,” he says. He helped Dr Peter Silberstein establish the neurological unit at PMH and established paediatric EEGs and EMGs in WA.

Now aged 82, he only recently “retired” from his hospital positions and continues to teach at the post-graduate level and examine medical students.

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2006 for service to medicine in the field of neurology, particularly through clinical and academic contributions to the neurological care of both children and adults, and as a teacher and mentor.

1957: Sixth year medical students at Royal Perth Hospital with a nurse attending to a patient in a Thomas splint. They are, from left, John Lore, Sonny Gubbay and the late Bill Dawson.

The class of 1957 – they were the first students to undertake the sixth and final year of the MBBS at the newly-established Medical School. Clinical Professor Sonny Gubbay is in the front row, far right.


Forging the way for child developmentIt was a Friday in the 1970s when a young paediatrician was asked to submit a funding proposal for a new scheme he had in mind to the WA Commissioner for Public Health. It was to be in by Monday.

That forward-thinking specialist was Clinical Professor Trevor Parry and he recalls that the Commissioner had been asking, “What’s that idea that Parry keeps talking about?”

Clinical Professor Parry was then the only developmental paediatrician in the Health Department and his idea was to bring child development into the spotlight. With the help of the WA Director of Child Health, Clinical Professor Parry filed the proposal.

“We put in a request for funding in order to establish a team of professionals, interdisciplinary, and so the State Child Development Centre emerged,” Clinical Professor Parry says.

He had returned to Perth a few years earlier after undertaking postgraduate training in public health and child health in England. “It was when I did the Diploma in Child Health that I discovered a new discipline of developmental paediatrics and that just rang all the bells for me,” he explains. He was soon awarded a Nestles Paediatric Travelling Fellowship and completed a 12-month course in developmental paediatrics.

“Then I came back to Australia as, embarrassingly, the new guru because this discipline was just emerging across the world,” he recounts. “So I was enormously privileged as well as challenged to introduce preventive community developmental paediatrics. I guess I was probably the first one in Australia so that’s where it all then began.”

Clinical Professor Parry remained Director and Senior Paediatrician of the Centre for almost three decades, until 2004. Over those years, some of the achievements that delight him most are the introduction of vision, hearing and cognitive screening of children around the State by child health nurses, organising international visiting lecturers in contemporary issues such as autism, introducing training programs in developmental paediatrics, and facilitating the setting up of the Circle of Security program, the Family Partnership Training Program for early intervention, which is now in all States and New Zealand (he became chair of the Australasian Board), and the National Investment for the Early Years (he was founder and Chair of the State Branch).

It was also thanks to his dedication that developmental paediatrics transformed from being “not proper medicine” to a highly respected discipline. “It was a real battle for a number of years to have recognition of the reality and value of interdisciplinary teams working for the developmental wellbeing of children,”

Clinical Professor Parry remarks.

In a way, he was used to being a pioneer. He was in the first cohort of 33 students – with only two females – who did the entire six years of the MBBS at UWA, graduating in 1962. With the new team of professors, Clinical Professor Parry says there was a sense of camaraderie and “newness”. “I think that there was really a deep appreciation of the opportunity but also an appreciation of the small group which could relate to one another as well to the professorial staff,” he says. The friendships have endured and, without fail, the class has met every year in November since graduation and now includes spouses.

Clinical Professor Parry remembers in particular one mentor, Professor Richard (Dick) Lefroy. “He taught us to think clinically and problem solve and so he stands out, I think for many of us, as a wonderful teacher,” he says.

Clinical Professor Parry has maintained a strong connection with his alma mater and has been a tutor, lecturer, co-ordinator and examiner for medical students for 45 years and is a Clinical Professor in Paediatrics and Child Health.

In 2012 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to paediatric medicine and to child health.

Clinical Professor Trevor Parry

The 1962 final year class: Back row: H. Watts, J. Kagi, G. Deleuil, D. McCully, D. Daw, J. Marum, L. Blake, G. Panizza, I. Yaksich, B. Edis, G. Cullity.Centre: M. Cohen, R. Swannell, N. Turner, J. Rowlands, K. Shilkin, M. Sloss, J. Adamson, T. Parry, S. Brash, J. Milne, E. King, A. Antonow.Front row: B. Bolton, J. Nicholas, T. Redgrave, B. Hogan, A. Waddell, P. Foote, M. Cooper, A. Jones, J. Scopa, A. Galvin, J. Lee, S. Jacob.


Standing up for healthKingsley Faulkner was down a two metre ditch on his father’s farm, digging it out yet again, when he decided it was time to get out.

He was 20, had a Diploma in Agriculture from Muresk under his belt and a future on the Porongurup farm, but the annually collapsing ditch sealed his fate. “My road to Damascus began down the bottom of this ditch and I thought, ‘I’m not going to be doing this for the next 50 years. I’m going to get out and I’m going to study medicine.’”

He had been studying English literature, philosophy, economics and mathematics at night as a UWA external student and ploughing the fields by day. “It was the relative intellectual isolation that I found difficult as a young man,” he explains.

Isolation became a thing of the past and a great deal of his next 50 years was devoted to social issues and powerful advocacy roles.

He began his MBBS at UWA in 1963 and by third year he was on the university’s Guild Council and WA secretary of the National Union of Australian University Students. “I actually followed Rob Holmes a Court into that role and he and I wrote a critique about apartheid, trying to argue for sanctions against South Africa,” he recalls. “And the Vietnam War was raging so I was involved in the student movement that was totally opposed to that war.” His interest in wider issues was sparked.

He remembers his six years in the Medical School as very happy ones, with key mentors including Professors Eric Saint, Neville Stanley, Rolf ten Seldam, Bill Macdonald, David Sinclair and Associate Professor Brian Vivian.

In his second year after graduation he headed north to Port Hedland as a District Medical Officer, gaining experience with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It was during his RFDS days that he chose surgery as his specialty. “It seemed to me that in an isolated

environment like that, additional surgical skills would be more use than additional physician training,” he explains.

He had married in fourth year of Medical School and he and his wife Kathleen spent the next three years in England where he trained as a surgeon, returning to WA only because his father was very ill. After graduating in surgery in 1978, he was appointed to the surgical staff at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and later became the Head of the Department of General Surgery.

It was in that era, the 1980s, that he became heavily involved in public health education and advocacy, having witnessed the tragedy of asbestos on visits to the Wittenoom blue asbestos mine during his time in the Pilbara.

He took up the cudgels for the anti-smoking campaign, beginning a 35-year involvement with the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, of which he was Chairman for eight years and is currently Vice President. “It has been the most significant and the most prolonged advocacy group in the tobacco arena,” he says.

For nine years he was on the Council of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the last two as President, and for the past seven years has been the Chair of the Foundation for Surgery, the philanthropic arm of the RACS. “That gives me a lot of satisfaction because it now has a corpus of $60 million and funds surgical research, global health initiatives within countries in our neighbourhood, and initiatives addressing indigenous

health problems in Australia and New Zealand.”

Professor Faulkner is also Vice President of Cancer Council WA, sits on the Board of the East Metropolitan Health Service, is on the academic staff of the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) and remains a Clinical Professor at UWA, teaching surgeons-in-training at CTEC.

His additional driving passion is his work as Chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia for the past six years. “This is a huge issue that has been badly handled in this country so far,” he explains. “At the moment, the overwhelming evidence is that unless we act far more urgently and far more decisively in addressing climate change, the health consequences as well as other environmental, social, economic, corporate governance and national security consequences are going to be enormous.”

He and his wife also make time to visit their four children and 10 grandchildren, who are spread around the globe.

Professor Kingsley Faulkner was on UWA Guild Council in 1965 as a student. He is far right.

Professor Kingsley Faulkner


Lessons from long ago still resonateDuring consultations with his patients, Associate Professor John Eikelboom has a voice in his head from 30 years ago.

It is that of respected surgeon Mr George Pestell, teaching UWA medical students at St John of God Hospital. “The clinical insights that he taught us and his plea to ‘test the urine’ accompany me as I see my clinic patients,” Associate Professor Eikelboom says.

Now a highly respected teacher himself and an eminent haematologist and researcher, Associate Professor Eikelboom is Senior Investigator at the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, having been appointed in March to the Jack Hirsch/PHRI Chair in Thrombosis and Atherosclerosis Research. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University, a haematologist at Hamilton General Hospital, and a Clinical Professor at UWA.

When he recalls his days at the UWA Medical School, where he completed his MBBS in 1988, learning anatomy during the preclinical years is at the forefront of his memory. “It was an exhilarating privilege to be taught by wonderful teachers and to learn from those

who donated their body to medical education,” he says. “My anatomy teachers led us with great patience and expertise to understand the intricacy and beauty of the human body. Another distinct memory is a series of inspired lectures by Roger Taylor on the anatomy and physiology of the heart.”

Vivid memories from the clinical years include his first visit to the operating room as a medical student, and his mentors such as Mr Pestell. “I was awed by the acumen of senior medical and surgical consultants, although they were the first to tell their students that no amount of ability and laboratory testing can compensate for spending time with patients,” he says.

After spending several years contemplating the direction of his career, he pursued haematology and research in thrombosis and vascular medicine. “Pat Crawford and John Raven were superb clinicians who inspired me to train in haematology,” he recalls. “Memorable periods of my clinical training include spending two years as a registrar together with Gavin Cull who was a tremendous colleague and a steadying force during my registrar days, and with Wendy Erber who was and still is an exceptional haematopathologist.”

He also has a lot of time for Professor Graeme Hankey, Professor of Neurology at UWA. “He is a truly remarkable physician, scientist and individual. I am yet to meet a more accomplished clinician and clinical researcher and he combines these qualities with exceptional intellect and a wonderfully

Associate Professor John Eikelboom

patient and generous personality. He inspired me to pursue training in clinical research and played an instrumental role in the success of my first peer reviewed publication and my first successful grant application.”

Associate Professor Eikelboom completed his training in internal medicine and haematology at Royal Perth Hospital and trained in epidemiology and thrombosis medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, where he later took up a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine followed by a Career Award from the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

In his early research career, Associate Professor Eikelboom studied risk factors for atherosclerotic vascular disease, with a particular focus on stroke and the possible role of hyperhomocysteinaemia.

Now he is working on various approaches to improving the efficacy and safety of antithrombotic therapy. Successes have included work on the impact of variable response to antiplatelet therapy on clinical outcome, the adverse impact of bleeding on outcome, and the benefits of combined anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapy for prevention of cardiovascular events. Associate Professor Eikelboom has also shown the impact of bleeding on adverse cardiovascular events and the effect of duration of blood storage prior to transfusion on outcome.

He continues to practise medicine as a haematologist, with thrombosis and vascular medicine as a major focus. And he is responsible for mentorship and training of residents and Fellows in thrombosis and clinical research methods. “This also provides a wonderful opportunity to identify the rare individual with a true passion for discovery who can be groomed for a future career in clinical research,” he says.

Although his work commitments have prevented his attending any Medical School reunions, he has a plan. “My mission is to attend the 35th reunion of the class of 1988 in 2023!”


Fun led to fame

It may seem an unlikely leap from a bit of “mischief, fun and skulduggery” at a medical students’ conference to heading the most powerful doctors’ organisation in Australia but that’s exactly the trajectory of a 1994 medical graduate.

Obstetrician/gynaecologist Dr Michael Gannon, Federal President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), had his first brush with medico-politics as early as first year Medical School – although at that time his involvement was not based on lofty ideals.

“There were 36 of us who caught the train to the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) convention in Melbourne in 1989,” he recalls. “Most of us went because we wanted to have fun. And in second year, five of us drove to the AMSA convention in Brisbane.”

By fourth year he was elected the AMSA representative from UWA and in fifth year he was the National President of AMSA, which meant that the 22-year-old also sat on the Federal Council of the AMA. “I suppose my involvement with the AMA has continued near-continuously since then. So although my entrée to AMSA was through the mischief, fun and skulduggery of attending the convention, it just became very obvious that it was an organisation that was making contributions to the life of medical students and making a contribution to health through the contribution we were in turn able to make to the AMA.”

He remembers the years of his MBBS degree on the Crawley campus as fabulous times. He enjoyed catching up with school-friends in other Faculties, playing intervarsity cricket and football, and joining the debating club. He found the Medical School to be excellent and

still enjoys keeping in touch with many of his classmates.

“It may well have been the golden age of medical education,” he says. “We were very fortunate in that day and age that we were not put under huge amounts of pressure. You had to pass, there were no second chances. But we were given the opportunity to get an education. In the six-year course there was the opportunity to immerse yourself in the basic sciences and I think they are important to medical practice.

“And the time we were given to have fun, relax, to just be uni students for a while was really important.”

He feels huge gratitude towards his Medical School teachers. “We do remember their names,” he says wryly.

“One other real highlight for me, and I think it’s borne out in my career choice, was living in at Agnes Walsh House at King Edward Memorial Hospital during our obstetrics term for four weeks. We all got to deliver babies.” The students learnt by immersion. “Because there was a dozen of us living together, there was definitely an opportunity for mischief but, more importantly, when people came back from the labour ward or the operating theatre, they related their experiences so it was a unique way of learning.”

He thoroughly enjoyed his general medicine term at Fremantle Hospital, the surgical term at Royal Perth Hospital, and a term in Katanning where GP Dr Ralph Chapman was particularly helpful. He also recalls the inspirational teaching of infectious diseases physician Dr Clay Golledge.

Dr Gannon went on to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology. He has

gone the full circle a few times - he is the Head of the Department at St John of God Subiaco, where he was born, he took over the practice of Professor Con Michael 13 years after he had been expertly tutored by him in fifth year, and he has delivered eight of the grandchildren of Mr Ivan Thompson, with whom he worked during his surgical term. In all, he has delivered more than 4,000 babies.

He has maintained his private practice, despite the workload of his AMA roles as current Federal President and Immediate Past President of the WA branch.

But with these leadership roles, something had to go and after 10 years of teaching UWA medical school students at Osborne Park Hospital, he relinquished that work. However, he still teaches Notre Dame medical students, remains a consultant with the Perinatal Loss Service at KEMH and sits on the WA Perinatal and Infant Mortality Committee and the Ethics Committee of the World Medical Association.

Dr Michael Gannon (left) in “convict” garb at the Australian Medical Students’ Association Convention in 1993 on James Oval, in his Medical School days. He is with, from left, Dr Julia Feutrill, Dr David Mincham at far back, Mr Gavin Clark and Dr Dru Daniels.

Dr Michael Gannon with five of his former Medical School classmates at St John of God Subiaco Hospital where they were all Visiting Medical Officers. They are, from left, Mr Richard Pemberton (Urologist), Dr Michael Gannon (Obstetrician and Gynaecologist), Dr Michelle Ammerer (Cardiologist), Dr Elizabeth Ferguson (Anaesthetist), Mr Gavin Clark (Orthopaedic Surgeon) and Mr Peter Bray (Vascular Surgeon).


It is only four years since Dr Rebecca Hutchens completed her medical degree at The University of WA but she is sure that certain memories will remain as standouts – her friendships and the Rural Clinical School.

“You go through quite a stressful degree and you form really strong friendships that I still maintain to this day,” she says. “But also, which is linked to that, is participating in the Rural Clinical School.” That experience involved spending her fifth year of medicine in Derby, which she found challenging but rewarding and very enjoyable.

The challenge was living in a small community town, away from Perth, friends, family and the comforts of city life that she was used to. “And there were some challenging issues in Derby including a high burden of mental illness and chronic disease,” she explains. “I didn’t always feel there was great access to services.”

Part of the enjoyment of that year came from a professional development week spent with the Derby and Broome-based RCS students at El Questro Wilderness Park in the Kimberley. “We would do a bit of study and practise OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations) in the morning and then in the afternoon go and climb a gorge,” she says. When it came time to return to Derby, she and some student friends drove back along the Gibb River Road, camping in different gorges. “It was amazingly beautiful and so it was a great time, I’ll never forget it.”

Back in Perth, taking time out from the demands of the busy six-year medical degree came in the form of art – but it was confined to the university holidays.

She had other priorities and at the end of her final year in 2013 she was awarded the top prize in Medicine, the Australian Medical Association (WA) Prize, which goes to the student who obtains the highest aggregate mark for all core units over the six years of the MBBS course.

Dr Hutchens, who was the first Indigenous student to win the coveted AMA prize, also won the Helen Jane Lamard Prize in Medicine for the student who is the most outstanding in Medicine in the sixth year.

Another priority during her degree was to help her fellow students and in her final year she was on the WA Medical Students’ Society committee as an Indigenous representative, along with Gemma Johnston. They arranged an Indigenous Health Panel to promote awareness of a range of issues and to engage students in Indigenous health.

Now based at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, she is in her first year of a three-year training course to be a physician and has not yet decided which specialty she will choose but would like eventually to work in Indigenous health.

The last two years have also been dedicated to research, on the topic of atrial fibrillation management. She is currently undertaking a Masters of Clinical Research at UWA under the

supervision of Associate Professor Brendan McQuillan, Head of the School of Medicine.

Mentors have been a big part of her medical degree and training. “In Medical School, sometimes it was medical students in the years above you, sometimes it was junior doctors,” she explains. “Then at the Rural Clinical School I had a really good GP mentor, Dr Jonathan Morling, a rural generalist. He was a very inspirational, multi-skilled GP, he really genuinely cared for the people he was working with so I think he stands out as one of my great mentors.

“And Brendan McQuillan has been an important mentor in completing my research Masters. I approached him to be my research supervisor because I remembered what a great teacher he was at Medical School when we were undergraduates.”

Of her decision to pursue medicine, she says, “I liked science and working with people and talking to people. And obviously watching my Mum as a role model my whole life I’m sure had an influence.” Her Mum is Professor Helen Milroy, Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health (CAMDH), who was the first Indigenous medical graduate in WA and the first Indigenous psychiatrist in Australia.

Looking ahead, Dr Hutchens would like to work interstate or overseas in order to experience a different hospital system and also complete a PhD.

Camaraderie and country clinical training

Dr Rebecca Hutchens at the Dedication Ceremony for medical graduates with her mother Professor Helen Milroy and grandmother Gladys Milroy.


To provide a snapshot of some of the many outstanding alumni who have passed through the halls of the Medical School, we asked a number to tell us about their main areas of impact as a clinician and/or researcher and/or teacher on the community. We also asked them to step back into their days at the Medical School and describe their strongest and fondest memories. Their snapshots, plus their major awards, are listed on the websitewww.medpharm.uwa.edu.au/60anniversary

Alumni are placed on the timeline according to the year in which they completed their MBBS at UWA. We also have included two Professors who were awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from UWA and one who graduated with an MD (Doctor of Medicine, Graduate Research Higher Degree) from UWA. Constrained by space, our list is far from exhaustive. We are keen to profile many more alumni on the website so if you would be happy to be included, please contact the Development and Alumni Relations office.

1959Emeritus Professor Con Michael AO AM

Emeritus Professor, The University of WA; Chair WA Board of the Medical Board of Australia; Member Medical Board of Australia; Chair Embryo Testing Principal Committee NHMRC; former Professor and Head of Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology UWA; former Head of Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology King Edward Memorial Hospital.

Medical School memories: A group of 15 students completed first year and transferred to Adelaide for the next three years as there was no Medical School in WA. During this time the public appeal for the first medical school in WA had been launched. The same number returned to Perth in 1958 to complete fifth and sixth year. The small number of students all away from home bonded and remained close friends throughout the course and later in hospital training positions. This friendship continues today in surviving graduates more than 50 years later. The number of students today (more than 300 in Medical Schools in three universities) does not foster such a close friendship throughout the whole of any year.

Key impact: Undergraduate and postgraduate teaching education and training in WA, nationally and internationally for more than three decades, becoming President of the RACOG in 1989-1992. My research interest was the investigation and management of hypertensive disease in pregnancy. The results were translated into management of the condition. In medical regulation I have contributed to the safety of reproductive technology at a time when it was expanding rapidly nationally and internationally. Through my long-term appointment to the Medical Board of WA and

of Australia I have contributed to public safety in health care.

MBBS, MRCOG (London), MD (UWA), FRCOG (London), DDU (in ultrasound), FRACOG Foundation Fellow, Hon. M.AcMed. Malaysia, Hon. F.AcMed. Singapore, Hon.

Doctor of Laws UNDA, Hon. Doctor of Science Curtin University.

1969Emeritus Professor John Fletcher AM

Emeritus Professor of Surgery, University of Sydney and Westmead Hospital; formerly Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor.

Medical School memories: The campus at Crawley, especially Anatomy, and the Hospital Clinical Schools – Royal Perth Hospital, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital.

Key impact: Being at Westmead Hospital from its outset and having a key role in the establishment of a comprehensive range of surgical services in a new teaching hospital; development of vascular surgery as a separate specialty and the evolution of endovascular surgery; support of vascular biology and surgical outcome research centres; teaching of medical students and surgical trainees in a rapidly changing scientific and medical environment; and promoting nationally and internationally an increasing awareness for the prevention and treatment of venous thrombo-embolism.

MBBS, MD, MS (Syd), FRACS, FRCS, DDU.

1959Clinical Professor Tim Welborn AO

Consultant endocrinologist, now in private practice;

Clinical Professor of Medicine at The University of Western

Australia; Emeritus consultant, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, former consultant in the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes at SCGH.

Medical School memories: The privilege of devoted teaching from a dedicated Faculty.

Key impact: Documenting the burden of diabetes in Australia with repeated population studies. My research in improving insulin assays led to the identification of insulin resistance, subsequently known as the metabolic syndrome. I reported the measurement of C-peptide levels as a way of discriminating type 1 from type 2 diabetes. Involvement in major studies including the Busselton Health Study and AusDiab. When President of the Australian Diabetes Society (ADS) in 1984 and with Len Dickson, then President of the Diabetes Federation of Australia (DFA), we achieved the amalgamation of the warring tribes, including the ADS, DFA, Diabetes Australia, the Western Australian Diabetes Research Foundation, the Kellion Foundation, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. This enabled a single voice, Diabetes Australia, to lobby government for support for diabetes in Australia, and led to the formation of the National Diabetes Services Scheme.

MBBS (WA), PhD (London), FRCP, FRCP.

1969Professor Fiona Stanley AC

Founding Director and now Patron, Telethon Kids Institute; Distinguished Research Professor, University of WA; Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Melbourne; Research Director, Australian National Development Index, University of Melbourne; UNICEF Australian Ambassador for Early Childhood Development.

Medical School memories: Impossible to answer (which are the fondest memories) - but going to Port Hedland in second year, Papua New Guinea in fifth year and having Dr Kevin Cullen as a mentor changed my thinking about what medicine could really do.

Key impact: Establishing epidemiology and public health research and training in child and youth health in WA; setting up the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (now Telethon Kids Institute); with others (eg Hobbs and Holman) enabling collection, linkage and analysis of population records of health and wellbeing for WA as an epidemiological research and policy evaluation capacity which is now one of the best internationally; being part of the team which elucidated the relationship of folate and neural tube defects and with Professor Carol Bower, implemented preventive programs nationally; building capacity in Aboriginal health research by training and supporting Aboriginal scholars (PhDs and post-docs); setting up the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth; serving for 12 years on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council with increases to NHMRC, early childhood, research infrastructure.

MBBS, MSc (Social Medicine, London), MD (UWA), FFPHM (UK), FAFPHM.

1973Professor Geoff Riley AM

Professor of Rural and Remote Medicine; Honorary Senior Fellow, Rural Clinical School of WA, The University of Western Australia; former roles include Acting Dean and, prior to that, Associate Dean (Student Affairs), Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science, UWA; Head of the Rural Clinical School of WA; Head of School of Primary, Aboriginal and Rural Health Care, and Head of School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, FMDHS, UWA; Member, Medical Board of WA; consultant psychiatrist Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital. Medical School memories: Life-long friends and colleagues.

Key impact: A decade as a rural GP and psychiatrist in Pemberton, WA; a decade as Member of the Medical Board of WA; many years of caring for doctors and their families; working behind the scenes in advisory capacity to UWA and hospitals, Royal Medical Colleges and other medical organisations regarding impaired doctors or staff; introducing the Clinical Ethics Program into the curriculum, and teaching Ethics and Professionalism to medical students; member of many ethics committees; member of numerous senior university and Faculty committees.

MBBS, FRCPsych (Fellow of The Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK), FRACGP, FRANZCP, FACRRM.

1969Professor Colin Masters AO

Co-Head of the Neurodegeneration Division at the Florey Institute and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne; Senior Medical Specialist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital; former Executive Director, Mental Health Research Institute. Medical School memories: Getting onto the wards and being overwhelmed by the knowledge/expertise of my teachers.

Key impact: Unravelling some of the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative conditions.

BMedSc(Hons), MBBS, MD, Hon.DLitt W.Aust., FRCPath, FRCPA, FFSc, FAA, FTSE, FAHMS.

1969 19731959


1973Professor Bruce Robinson AM

Professor of Medicine, The University of WA; consultant physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in respiratory medicine; Director, National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases; Director, The Fathering Project, UWA.

Medical School memories: My years in Medical School were a pleasure, as the number of students in our year group was quite

small so teaching/mentoring was quite personal. I remember fondly living in the nurses’ quarters at King Edward Hospital while we were doing our obstetric term, plus numerous staff/student cricket matches and Hadley Cup inter-year football club matches (at one of which, I was “taken out” so badly by someone in the year ahead of me that I thought I would end up in hospital!). I developed a strategy as a student of attending extra sessions run by the excellent teachers, and not attending at all any sessions run by poor teachers, something which rather bemused my colleagues. That experience also influenced and improved my own subsequent role as a teacher – I used to always think “how would I teach this if I were given that responsibility?”

Key impact: One of my main roles now, in addition to being a respiratory physician, is that of cancer researcher – I never expected to be doing this, but my love of research was triggered during my doctoral studies in the USA after eight years of intense clinical work. I am working on a number of things, including new strategies to use immunotherapy to cure cancer. By the end of this year we expect to start a world-first clinical trial using mutation-defined cancer vaccines (“personalised therapy”). I teach a lot, spending a lot of time mentoring medical students. I have enjoyed initiating and running the “How to Break Bad News to patients” course over the past 25 years.I have put some of my tropical medicine training to use by volunteering in our region e.g. in Aceh after their tsunami and via many other roles throughout Indonesia. I am now Honorary Professor at the University of Indonesia. Seeing the statistics on the powerful effects of a strong and appropriate father figure in children’s lives, and the risks that children face if they do not have such, we started the UWA Fathering Project. This group goes out to schools and informs Dads about how important they are and provides some road-tested tips. At each school we initiate a Champion Dads Group. Our vision of having one in every school in Australia within five years will have a spectacular effect on subsequent drug addiction, crime, bullying, teenage depression and suicide and a host of other health and social parameters.

AM, MBBS, MD, FRACP, FRCP, DTM and H, FCCP, CitWA.

1974Professor Barry Marshall Nobel Laureate AC

WA Ambassador for Life Sciences; University of WA Brand Ambassador; Director of the Marshall Centre for Infectious Diseases Research and Training; Clinical Professor in the UWA Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences; consultant gastroenterologist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

Medical School memories: The brilliance and enthusiasm of the science teachers, especially those who taught in anatomy, physiology, chemistry and physics.

Key impact: The microscopic stomach bug Helicobacter pylori affects half the world’s population. It creates an enormous yet preventable health care burden and endless suffering. It remains a major threat to public health. While infection rates in Australia are at an all-time low, our

nearest neighbours have very high

infection rates. More than

500 million Chinese are infected with the disease.

MBBS, FRACP, FAA, FRS.

1975Professor John Newnham AM

Professor of Obstetrics (Maternal Fetal Medicine) at The University of WA; Head of the UWA Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Chief Scientific Director of the Women and Infants Research Foundation; clinical maternal fetal medicine specialist at King Edward Memorial Hospital; Adjunct Professor at Peking University, Beijing, China; and Honorary Director of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Nanjing University, China.

Medical School memories: My first Saturday night shift at the Royal Perth Hospital Emergency Centre - I knew that I had found “my place”. Little was I to know that I would later sign up for a career based heavily on night work! Key impact: Contributing to our understanding that events before birth have impacts on health and disease throughout the lifespan and that preventing disease is best achieved by interventions at their origins. This fundamental concept drove me to conceive and initiate The Raine Study in 1988 and the Western Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Initiative in 2014 (The Whole Nine Months). MBBS, MD, FRCOG, FRANZCOG, DDU, CMFM.

1976Professor Terry Nolan AO

Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, and Head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne; Professorial Research Fellow and Head, Vaccine and Immunisation Research Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; former senior staff specialist (now Honorary), General Medicine, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne; former Chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), former Deputy Chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Research Committee.

Medical School memories: Many highlights, including my experience in my Bachelor of Medical Science year studying synaptic ultrastructure both at UWA and on a Sobotka Fellowship to University of Otago in New Zealand; exposure to many superb clinicians and academics, and experience as president of WAMSS. And on a lighter note, the then Professor of Medicine telling my tutorial group in late final year not to worry about the exams, because we’d all pass – eventually!

Key impact: National immunisation policy and practice; clinical trials of many vaccines now in use in Australia and around the world.

MBBS, PhD (McGill University), FRACP (Paediatrics), FAFPHM (Public Health Medicine), FAHMS.

1978Emeritus Professor D’Arcy Holman AM

Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of WA; former Chair in Public Health, UWA; former Assistant Commissioner Planning, Health Department of WA.

Medical School memories: The camaraderie, support and great humour of our small student group on the hospital wards during the later years of the course.

Key impact: Reform of WA’s Aboriginal health programs funded by the WA Health Department; leadership and reform of UWA’s animal ethics framework; first successful integration of Federal and State health data to provide a full picture of health system performance with positive impacts on medication safety and mental illness; creation of the International Health Data Linkage Network; leadership of WA’s Road Safety Council during implementation of the Toward Zero strategy; world leadership in the training of linked health data analysts; instigator and leadership of the WA Health Data Linkage System; instigator of WA’s Quality of Surgical Care Program; first chair of the expert medical advisory panel of Health and Medicine in the West Australian newspaper; reforms to improve WA’s mental health legislation; President of the Cancer Council of WA; Australia’s first health consumer advocate within an academic institution; instigator and leadership of UWA’s first undergraduate health science degree program; Head of the School of Population Health at UWA; first comprehensive strategic plan of the Health Department of WA; plans for the future development of Perth’s metropolitan hospitals, emergency departments and residential care for the young disabled; reforms of WA’s Community and Child Health Services, NHMRC Public Health Committee and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; creation of the WA Centre for Public Health; better understanding of the causes of malignant melanoma of the skin; Australia’s first official statistics on deaths and illness caused by tobacco, alcohol misuse and illicit drugs; new programs in the areas of Aboriginal environmental health, HIV and hepatitis B control, childhood immunisation, breast and cervix cancer screening, and the regulation of reproductive technology.

MBBS, LLB(Hons), MPH(Harv), PhD, GAICD, FACE, FAFPHM, FPHAA, FAIM.

1974 1975 1976 1978

1976 Professor James McCluskey

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Chair of Microbiology and Immunology, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, The University of Melbourne; consultant immunologist, Victorian Transplantation and Immunogenetics Service, Australian Red Cross Blood Service.

Medical School memories: The great teaching and wonderful people. Sitting on the lawns on the UWA campus. A Friday beer at Steve’s.

Key impact: Clinical immunology, transplantation matching, drug hypersensitivity, medical education, basic research.

MBBS (UWA), B Med Sci (UWA), MD (UWA), FRACP, FRCPA, FAHMS, FAA.


1980Professor Graeme Hankey

Professor of Neurology, Medical School, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, The University of Western Australia; consultant neurologist, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital; Clinical Trials Advisor, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research; Research Affiliate, Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science; former consultant neurologist and Head of Stroke Unit, Royal Perth Hospital.

Medical School memories: Enduring friendships with fellow students and teachers.

Key impact: Leading large collaborative international clinical trials of interventions to treat and prevent stroke (e.g. VITATOPS, AFFINITY, ROCKET AF, CHARISMA, ESPRIT, IST, IST-3, AMADEUS, NAVIGATE-ESUS), and epidemiological studies of the incidence, causes and outcome of stroke (e.g. PCSS, ACROSS, HIMS, INTERSTROKE) that have translated into improved health policy and outcomes for patients and the community.Associate editor of Stroke (2000-2010) and Circulation (2016-) – journals of the American Heart Association; editorial consultant for The Lancet and The Lancet Neurology (2005-); and consulting editor for the International Journal of Stroke and Cochrane Stroke Group. Author of 10 books (most recent is Hankey’s Clinical Neurology, 2nd ed., 2014) and more than 775 peer-reviewed journal articles with more than 74,000 citations (H-index: 108). More than 550 invited lectures at 320 international, 130 national, and 100 local scientific meetings. Consecutive NHMRC program grant funding since 2003 (to 2021). More than $70 million in competitive research grants: $10 million - international grants, $60 million - national grants ($57 million NHMRC, $3 million other), $ 2 million - local grants.

MBBS, MD, FRCP, FRCPE, FRACP, FAHA, FESO, FAAHMS.

1980Professor Peter Leedman

Professor of Medicine, The University of Western Australia; Director of Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and Head of Laboratory for Cancer Medicine at the Perkins; Chairman of Linear Clinical Research Ltd; endocrinologist at Royal Perth Hospital; Chairman of Sylvia and Charles Viertel Foundation Medical Advisory Committee; Member of NHMRC Research Committee; former Director of Research at RPH; former Director of Translational Research at the Perkins.

Medical School memories: The comradery and enjoyment of learning medicine in a collective. Key impact: In clinical medicine, my PhD which was focused on the cause of Graves’ disease, further fuelled by my post-Doctoral studies on understanding how thyroid hormone works at the molecular level and followed up with papers from the Busselton population study in which we made significant contributions to thyroid antibody levels and the prediction of disease. In science, my laboratory has discovered new factors that regulate expression of nuclear receptors such as the androgen receptor in prostate cancer and estrogen receptor in breast cancer. We have characterised some microRNAs into potential therapeutics in several solid tumours with a poor prognosis, including liver, head and neck and colon cancer, together with melanoma. We have several patents on some discoveries and have established a company, miReven, for commercialisation of the work. We are working towards an early phase clinical trial in patients with liver cancer. A very active role in teaching, with multiple Honours and PhD students, and in clinical teaching within the UWA Medical School system and the hospital post-graduate environment.As Director of Perkins, I lead a world class research organisation and am very involved with the community in a range of education programs as well as our Biodiscovery Laboratory, which provides a STEM program of teaching to school children and the community.As Chairman of Linear Clinical Research Ltd, an early phase clinical trials facility, I have helped build the company from inception into a world class facility that brings new medicines to the WA public earlier than ever before.Together with Professor Peter Klinken and the Perkins Board I played a central role in the design, building and delivery of the two iconic Perkins research buildings in Perth.I have served on numerous committees, locally, nationally and internationally, focused on research investment, strategic planning, grant reviewing, policy development.

MBBS (UWA), PhD (University of Melbourne), FRACP, FAHMS.

1980Clinical Associate Professor Liz Wylie

Medical Director and Program Manager of Breast Screen WA; Head of Department of Radiology at Royal Perth Hospital; consultant radiologist with a special interest in breast imaging; Clinical Associate Professor, teaching final year University of WA medical students when they are rostered to RPH Radiology for their final year.

Medical School memories: Studying and taking coffee breaks with a bunch of mates in an assortment of libraries - in first year in the Engineering library, in second and third year in the Biological Sciences library, in fourth year in the Reid Library, in fifth year in the Princess Margaret Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital libraries and in sixth year the PMH, King Edward Memorial Hospital and SCGH libraries.

Key impact: I feel privileged to have been able to work for so long in the public sector and I believe my contribution as a clinician has been to promote and develop breast cancer screening in WA and facilitate improvements in breast imaging, encouraging and supporting my peers and trainees.

MBBS, FRANZCR.

1981Dr Richard Pestell

President, Pennsylvania Cancer and Regenerative Medicine Center; former Special Advisor For Innovation to President Thomas Jefferson University; former Executive Vice President Thomas Jefferson University; former Founding Director Delaware Valley Institute for Clinical and Translational Science; former Director, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center; former Director Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Medical School memories: The excitement and enthusiasm of the educators.

Key impact: The establishment of medical facilities, educational materials, educational and training programs, and funding sources which continue to provide patients, including minority and LGBT, with access to health care including the Capital Breast Care Center.

MBBS, MD, PhD, MBA.

1988Professor Susan Prescott Professor of Paediatrics in the School of Medicine at The University of Western Australia; paediatrician and immunologist, specialising in allergy at the Perth Children’s Hospital; Founding Director of the ORIGINS Project at the Telethon Kids Institute; Founding President of the DOHaD (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease) Society in Australia and New Zealand; Founding Director of the inFLAME Global Network.

Medical School memories: My fondest memories were really from the knowledge that my grandfather, Sir Stanley Prescott, was the former Vice-Chancellor of The University of Western Australia who founded the Medical School in 1957 - and how proud my grandmother was. My inspiration to study medicine came from my grandmother, one of the few women to study medicine in the 1930s and my love of research and academia was inspired by my grandfather.

Key impact: I am a passionate advocate for social change and adopting a holistic approach to life. I have authored more than 300 scientific publications and a number of books: The Allergy Epidemic – a Mystery of Modern Life, The Calling, Origins - Early Life Solutions to the Modern Health Crisis, and The Secret Life of Your Microbiome: Why Nature and Biodiversity are Essential to Health and Happiness. My interests and expertise are focused on early life risk factors for inflammation as an antecedent and preventive target for a broad range of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), particularly early onset NCDs such as allergy, obesity and mental health. Former Director of the World Allergy Organisation.

MBBS, PhD, FRACP.

1993Dr Rosalie Schultz

PhD candidate at Flinders University, working through the Centre for Remote Health; former Senior Medical Officer in NT Government Department of Health Remote Health Services and at Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, Remote Health Branch; former Director of Medical Services at Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation.

Medical School memories: the structured approach, based on chemistry and physics, then biochemistry and physiology, anatomy, microbiology and pharmacology. We had almost no patient contact until fourth year. This approach to medicine has served me well, despite being radically different from current approaches. I remain inspired by great teachers from The University of WA including Fiona Stanley, who has provided the basis for my career in Aboriginal and public health, the late Konrad Jamrozik and D’Arcy Holman.

Key impact: Challenging what I see... getting better things happening, from how we conceptualise the epidemics of diabetes in relation to climate change to demonstrating the need for vaccination programs.

Postgraduate Diploma in Bioethics (Monash), Master of Public Health (NT University), FAFPHM, FRACGP, FARGP.

19811980 20021988 1993


2002 Emeritus Chancellor, Clinical Professor Alex Cohen AOHon. D. Litt. (UWA) 2002

Clinical Professor of Medicine, The University of WA; Emeritus Chancellor, UWA; Emeritus consultant physician Royal Perth Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital; former consultant physician and endocrinologist RPH and SCGH; former Director of Clinical Training at Hollywood Private Hospital and Director of Postgraduate Medical Education at SCGH.

Medical School memories: The many years spent in teaching small groups of medical students in a mutual learning experience and the time spent in training and learning from my interns and registrars. Key impact: I hope that my key areas of impact as a clinician have been to influence and render memorable our meetings around the bedside over the years and, occasionally, in the lecture theatre and meeting rooms, for consideration of new advances in general medicine and endocrinology. As a public and after-dinner speaker, I hope that I have left traces of insight into some of the highlights, fads, fancies and fun of medical practice. As a practising physician, I am proud to have founded, with my late wife Adèle, the Diabetes Research Foundation in 1998 and in 2000 having materially brought about the raising of $3M to establish the Chair of Diabetes at UWA, currently located at the Perkins Institute. In 2004 I raised the finance for the creation of the Professorial Walk honouring the Foundation Professors of the Faculty of Medicine. The bas-relief sculptures of the Professors were crafted by sculptors Charles and Joan Walsh-Smith. Finally, as President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2000-2002 I am proud to have been very involved in the formation

of the Society of Internal Medicine, stressing the importance of the General Physician in the whole

structure of medical practice. As Chancellor of UWA I have striven to bring Medicine in out of

the cold and back onto the campus. MBBS (Hons) University of Adelaide, MD University of Adelaide, FRACP, FRCP, FRCPE,

FRCPI, Hon. D. Litt. (UWA).

For an article written by Clinical Professor Cohen on Dr Bruce Hunt, who played a role in the foundation of the Medical School, go to:http://members.racp.edu.au/page/library/college-roll/college-roll-detail&id=437

2005Dr Michael Winlo

Chief Executive Officer at Linear Clinical Research; former Health Team Lead at Palantir Technologies in Silicon Valley. Medical School memories: Professor Paul McMenamin in Rocky Horror garb at the Medical School play “The Smooth Operator”.

Key impact: Taking an entrepreneurial attitude to the challenge of accelerating the delivery of new therapies to patients. More specifically, using technology and data to overcome organisational/institutional constraints. MBBS (Hons), MBA (Stanford).

2007Emeritus Professor Lou Landau AOHon. D. Litt. (UWA) 2007

Emeritus Professor, The University of WA; former Principal Medical Advisor, WA Department of Health; former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, UWA; former Professor of Paediatrics, UWA and paediatric respiratory physician, Princess Margaret Hospital for Children.

Medical School memories: Communication, support and care between staff. Collaborative research. Relationships with the community at all levels.

Key impact: Maintaining and possibly extending the high standards of care and commitments to all colleagues and the WA community as set up by my predecessors. When I was still in Melbourne and was president of the Paediatric Research Society of Australia, I had a call from Bill Macdonald to say that he “had a new researcher coming to the next meeting. Could I help look after her and introduce her to others? She may do some great things. Her name is Fiona Stanley.”Setting up Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and the Harry Perkins Research Institute.Facilitating the Raine Research Study into the origins of health and disease from conception to adult life.Communicating with government for support.Communicating with the community.

MBBS, MD, FRACP, Hon. D. Litt. (UWA).

2009Dr John van Bockxmeer

District Medical Officer, Hedland Health Campus, WA Country Health Service.

Medical School memories: The comradery of final year studies, bonding through social events and being inspired by senior clinicians.

Key impact: Advancing the field of rural medicine through research in the Pilbara region. Providing long-term sustainable healthy lifestyle change through my charity “Fair Game Australia”.

MBBS, FACRRM, DEM, MPH/TM, DCH.

2014Dr Hsern Ern Tan

Junior doctor at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Hollywood Private Hospital; PhD student at Ear Science Institute Australia and The University of WA School of Surgery; Westpac Future Leaders Scholar.

Medical School memories: Overseas medical elective to Kisiizi, a remote village in Western Uganda, which was an eye-opening and recalibrating experience.

Key impact: I completed the SPARK Co-Lab medical design course and successfully worked with a team to create a patented device that aims to lower the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia in ICU. My PhD will investigate how we can repair chronic tympanic membrane (eardrum) perforations through the combination of 3D printing technology and optical coherence tomography.

MBBS (Hons), current PhD student, Diploma in Music Performance (AMusA and DipABRSM).

2016 Clinical Professor Harvey Coates AO MD (Doctor of Medicine, Graduate Research Higher Degree) UWA

Clinical Professor in Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, and School of Paediatrics and Child Health at The University of WA. Former senior ENT surgeon to Princess Margaret Hospital for Children. Former Clinical ENT lead to Kimberley WA Country Health Service.

Medical School memories: At my medical school and I’m sure it is the same at UWA, the privilege of helping look after patients and learning the wonderful way in which the human body functions and occasionally malfunctions.

Key impact: The four key areas in which I hope I helped the WA and Australian community was by being co-founder of the first paediatric ENT Society in Australia; starting with an audiology colleague the first large scale newborn hearing program in Australia; clinical and basic research in otitis media in Aboriginal children; and my involvement with charities such as Telethon Kids Institute, Lions Hearing Foundation, Earbus Foundation and EON Foundation.

MBBS (UQ), MD (UWA), MS (Otol) Minn, FRACS, FRCS(C), DABO.

2002 2005 2009 2014 20161993

Thank you to our alumni and friends who volunteer for more than 1,370 volunteer roles in support of our students

during the year.

2007


What was the Medical School like in its infant days – and how does it compare now? To get a feeling for it, we asked a student, a teacher and a researcher from the early era and also from the present day for their reflections.

What is going on inside a body and a bottle

Emeritus Professor Max Walters recalls that as a lecturer in pathology he walked out on his medical students twice – and it was to make a point.

The lectures for The University of WA Medical School were formal, with the students seated at the front. “Usually the students were quiet. Only on two occasions, much later in my career, I walked in and all the students were talking and talking and they didn’t stop… so I walked out. Well, they stopped talking.”

His point was that students need to learn respect because they are privileged to be learning to become doctors with other people’s lives in their hands. “You should show respect for your teachers and for your colleagues and even more for your patients,” he says.

He had graduated from the University of Adelaide in the class of 1954, having completed the first year of the MBBS in

Perth. Although in his teaching days he was strict with his students, it wasn’t as bad as Adelaide when he was a student, he says. “When we went to the lecture theatre, the lecturer was usually a clinician in private practice who would come in, we’d all stand and all have to hand in a button with a number showing we were there – it was compulsory to be at every lecture.”

After graduation he returned to Perth and later specialised in pathology. He was appointed as a lecturer in pathology at UWA, teaching the students in a former cancer ward at Royal Perth Hospital which, with some additions, became the centre of the UWA clinical medical school with teaching laboratories and rooms for pathology and microbiology and medicine.

“All the teaching was done at RPH for several years and we all used to lunch together, have tutorials together, and have clinico-pathological conferences,” he explains.

“A lot of the teaching was done in that way. It was co-ordinated teaching with the physicians and surgeons. It was, I think, quite brilliant.”

As well as the formal lectures, tutorials were held which made use of a fine museum with beautifully mounted specimens. “We used these so-called bottles with the organs in them to discuss not only the pathology but the clinical implications of what was going on inside that bottle,” Emeritus Professor Walters says.

“It was similar with autopsies. Someone would present the clinical story and the prosector would then show the organs to the students and explain the pathological changes.

“It was a fantastic learning experience about disease and even health because you went into healthy tissue as well. You can read about it in a book but when you actually hold a diseased organ in your hand and you see it, it is alive.

Then and Now

Teacher then “Frequently, in those ancient days of medicine, we would find something that was not what the clinician had thought it was. But nowadays, with radiology, they are usually 99 per cent correct in their diagnoses.”

Emeritus Professor Walters gained his Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1959 but stayed with pathology, becoming a senior lecturer, reader, acting Head of Department and then Chair in the early 1970s.

He was to become Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry from 1980 to 1983 and again from July 1989 to December 1991.

He looks back on his days of the Medical School with great fondness. “It was fantastic. The professors stuck together and worried about each other.

“In the first 20 or 30 years of the doctors, who are now the seniors in the profession, we had first class people and I have put myself in their hands many, many times.”

Emeritus Professor Max Walters - then.

Emeritus Professor Max Walters - now.


What was the Medical School like in its infant days – and how does it compare now? To get a feeling for it, we asked a student, a teacher and a researcher from the early era and also from the present day for their reflections.

Learning how, not what, to think

Teaching medical students these days focuses on helping them with how to think and how to learn rather than what to think and what to learn.

In other words, says Dr Helen Wilcox, Senior Lecturer in General Practice, they are being shown how to be self-directed learners.

“One of the skills we can best equip our students with is the ability to sort through and assimilate and prioritise all the different sources of medical education and select what has the most robust evidence base behind it and what’s the most relevant to their clinical workspace.

“We are teaching them how to educate themselves as opposed to just giving them all the education packaged for them.”

Vertical integration is one of the main teaching themes by which science-based learning in parallel with clinical learning – including clinical reasoning, diagnosis formation and understanding “how doctors think” – are introduced from the beginning and continue throughout the four-year Doctor of Medicine (MD) post-graduate course.

“We are very conscious now that medical learning is a lifelong process and, in fact, one of our course outcomes is for our students to be committed to lifelong learning,” Dr Wilcox says.

Then and Now

Teacher now Part of this process is Continuing Professional Development after specialisation.

The methods of teaching have also changed, responding to the pressures on the teaching hospitals and clinical training environments resulting from an increasing number of medical students.

The evolution has been from very small group clinician-led groups to medium group teaching as well as self-directed learning and using junior medical staff to deliver some of the teaching. In addition, students are often spread across many teaching hospitals and clinics and can be brought together for tutorials via video-conferencing. “That’s quite popular with the students because they don’t have to brave the freeway,” Dr Wilcox says with a laugh.

Modern technology has popped up in many other scenarios. It is commonplace to see students with iPads in class and although they are expected to attend lectures for the benefit of face-to-face and interactive learning, they can usually revisit the online recordings in their own time.

The “flipped classroom” is an extension of the focus on interactive learning, whereby students will have studied the content before the lecture, freeing up time for the lecturer to elaborate on it and answer questions. There are also workshops, skills laboratories, bedside teaching, and simulation with “virtual patients”. In fact, alumni often assist by acting as the “patients” to enable medical students to practise their history taking, examination and diagnosis skills.

Inter-professional learning is also deemed important. “In the pre-clinical space, students learn from clinicians in various hospital-based specialties as

well as from allied health professionals,” Dr Wilcox says. “An example would be if the students are learning about stroke, they hear not only from the stroke physician and neurologist but they hear from a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist and a clinical nurse specialist about the holistic care of a stroke patient.”

Dr Wilcox is also a practising GP and WA Censor for the RACGP.

Dr Helen Wilcox


Never looked backWhen Dr Isaac (Ike) Raiter achieved excellent marks in his final year school exams, everyone expected him to study medicine or law.

And although he was keen to follow medicine, in those days there was no Medical School in WA so it meant travelling interstate to study. “I had lost my parents when I was a teenager and I had a younger brother and I didn’t want to have to go away and leave him,” he explains. “That’s why I studied optometry and didn’t do medicine at the end of my Leaving.”

With a Diploma of Optometry from the University of WA in hand, he later was able to pursue his desire to do medicine. He was in the class of medical students who, in 1959, were the first to graduate with a West Australian degree, having undertaken their first, fifth and sixth years at UWA and the second, third and fourth years in Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney.

The young Ike Raiter was one of only two who went to Melbourne and felt proud to represent WA there. “I was lucky in that I was granted a prosector in anatomy because I had some of the top marks in anatomy and that was in competition with all the competitive people of Melbourne so I was quite proud of being West Australian.”

He says it was wonderful to return to Perth in fifth year. “We felt we were lucky to get in and proud that West Australia had a Medical School and we appreciated that there was an appeal and that West Australians had to donate to get it going.

“We were also very pleased to have the new Professors. They were all very exciting, dedicated people and they all had very interesting past histories that they could relate to when they were teaching us.”

Then and NowStudent then The students

formed close friendships as only about 17 from about 120 had passed the first year of basic sciences in 1954. “We used to help each other,” Dr Raiter says. “I was very close to Bryant Stokes and Tim Welborn.”

The Medical School was based near Royal Perth Hospital in a small building in Victoria Square. “It was very exciting for us because we were there, on the job,” Dr Raiter says. They were rotated through the hospital’s departments but for Paediatrics they went to Princess Margaret Hospital and for Obstetrics and Gynaecology to King Edward Memorial Hospital, where they delivered a good number of babies.

“We seemed to have a lot more practical work to do in the wards than they do now because we had smaller numbers,” he observes. In the Emergency Department, they assessed patients and performed some minor procedures such as suturing.

In fifth year they were each given a project by Professor Eric Saint, the Foundation Professor of Medicine, to investigate. “This took us out into the community as well as being in the hospital,” Dr Raiter says. His assignment took him to the law courts. “The one I was given was about recidivism. I didn’t even know what the word meant!”

When Dr Raiter excelled in his final year exams, won a Commonwealth Scholarship, and decided to specialise

in ophthalmology, Professor Saint told him, “Oh Ike, you must go to Moorfields”, which was the most famous eye hospital in the world. “Having such experienced world-wide professors, we were prepared to take their advice,” Dr Raiter says.

“When I graduated and came back to West Australia, there were not many people who were prepared to work at Princess Margaret Hospital so I dedicated my time there.” He also worked at King Edward Memorial Hospital and one of his special areas became retinopathy of prematurity. “I had learnt the techniques in London and I continued on with that. It was a big part of my career.”

As a consultant, Dr Raiter also taught medical students when they did their hospital terms.

He stopped operating when he was 70 and “fully retired” three years ago at the age of 81.

In 2013, Dr Ike Raiter was awarded a Meritorious Service Award from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists for meritorious service or performance of duty to the College, medicine, ophthalmology, education, research or the community.

Dr Ike Raiter and his graduating classmates of 1959 celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2009 at the Weld Club. They were the first medical students to graduate with a West Australian degree. They were: Back row: Dr John Hanrahan, Dr David Formby, Dr Terence McAuliffe, Clinical Professor Timothy Welborn, Dr Mashie Levi, Dr Neil Fitch. Front row: Emeritus Professor Con Michael, Dr Owen Isbel, Dr Nicholas Kraw, Dr Ike Raiter and Adjunct Professor Bryant Stokes. Dr Malcolm Hay (inset photo).

Dr Ike Raiter

Dr Ike Raiter and some of his colleagues were in the press when they were fifth year medical students. From left, they are Charles G. Picton-Warlow, Bryant A. R. Stokes, Tim Welborn, and Isaac Raiter.


Didactic out, digital inBeing a medical student these days looks largely like this: “flipped classrooms”, online resources, podcasts, open access medical education, video-conferencing and small-group learning.

Ms Shannon Marantelli, who was in the first intake of the postgraduate four-year Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in 2014, describes the life of a modern student.

She says a lot of work went into converting the course from the undergraduate six-year MBBS degree to the new MD degree, including holding focus groups for input from past MBBS students.

Having completed a Biomedical Science degree from UWA in 2006, she worked in pathology in WA, then in a cancer bio-bank in Melbourne and later a cancer research laboratory there, returning to Perth to take up her Medical School place.

There is a lot more focus now on self-directed learning, on the students being adult learners, Ms Marantelli explains. Rather than receiving didactic teaching, they are expected to complete pre-reading and access resources and then turn up to the lecture or tutorial with a certain level of background knowledge, facilitating questions, clarification and elaboration. This teaching strategy is dubbed “the flipped classroom”.

“It encourages you to think more on your feet and encourages a lot more discussion and debate among the students,” she explains. “I think it does save quite a bit of time and is more effective for the tutors than just sitting there and teaching you, telling you something and you’re writing it down.”

The second big change is the use of online resources. “When I did biomed, the textbooks weren’t that out of date but nowadays if you read a textbook,

Then and NowStudent now that’s probably what

was happening 10 years ago,” Ms Marantelli says. “Then they say if you read a journal, that is what was happening 2-5 years ago by the time the study gets published. So if you want the real cutting-edge, what is going on right now, you have to use a lot of online resources.

“It is a movement towards free open access medicine, so that is podcasts, and people who read all the articles for you and condense them down into little reviews because there is just an overwhelming amount of data out there.”

Although many university lectures are recorded and can be accessed online, it is preferable to turn up in person because you can ask questions, she says. “And it’s always nice when the Faculty goes to the effort of getting us really decent speakers who are renowned physicians or surgeons or whoever they be that they can look out and see more than a handful of people.

“Once we’ve gone into clinical years in the hospitals, the university is really great and they do video-conferencing. They have a set time for our lectures and you just have to go in whichever hospital you’re at to the room that’s set up for you. You don’t have to travel back to campus. Everyone just dials in and then contributes via video-conference.”

For small-group learning in the first three semesters, students are divided into groups of 8-15 with a tutor each. “That becomes your group for the semester

and you actually get quite a decent bond with them and it is a little mini-friendship group,” Ms Marantelli says.

In 1962 there were 33 students who were the first to do all six years of their MBBS at UWA, last year there were 253 graduands. Ms Marantelli says this means that the student teams in hospital rotations are getting bigger and it can be difficult to get patient exposure and to contribute during ward rounds.

A key innovation is the Preparation for Internship block which will be run at the end of this (fourth) year for two months, during which time the students will be attached to a hospital team and act as interns, doing ward rounds and so on in preparation for becoming interns in January.

With the inevitable pressures of a four-year medical degree, Ms Marantelli admits it can be stressful to try to fit everything in. “You need to exercise, cook dinner, study, sleep, and you’ve got to try to see your friends and family, so it’s a lot of juggling.”

But, she adds, there is still some time left over to have fun and party.

Ms Shannon Marantelli


Professor Ian Constable with the first laser installed at Royal Perth Hospital in 1976.

Evolution of researchers from one to allResearch has changed from being individual-centric to being conducted increasingly by large research consortiums, says eminent ophthalmologist and researcher Professor Ian Constable.

“The evolution of medical research in WA as everywhere else has been driven by the increasing demands of government and the public to translate medical research into benefits,” he explains. “That was not always so, you could just research on some rare disease and publish new papers.”

The new way means a more corporate setting with shorter time frames, more collaboration nationally and internationally, and increasingly sophisticated technology.

When Professor Constable began his own research in Perth in 1975, having come over from Harvard Medical School, a leader who stood out was the University of WA’s Foundation Professor of Medicine Eric Saint.

“He set the Medical School going, at least in his area, with a lot of opportunity for students to do research from the beginning.” Professor Constable recalls. “It tended to be, in today’s terms, very

Then and NowResearcher then localised to his interests as it would

have to be, with no real technology. But I think the cultural attitude for the Medical School towards research was really set by those good appointments at the beginning.”

Professors including Dick Joske in Medicine, Bernard Catchpole in Surgery and Neville Stanley in Microbiology, Allen German in Psychiatry, Bill Macdonald in Child Health and Max Walters in Pathology all had good personal research records. “To some extent, they were overwhelmed by the teaching needs without too many lieutenants, and also by their very big clinical role, so I think their research once they came to the Medical School reflected their personal interests and it was not corporate with big teams – it was still individualised,” Professor Constable says.

“Most of the research appeared to me in the 70s to be done by the pre-clinical professors and their teams.” He cites Professors Wilf Simmons and Evan Morgan in Physiology, David Curnow in Biochemistry and James Paterson in Pharmacology as great researchers. “They recruited high quality students who did PhDs with them and I think that’s where the critical mass of laboratory scientists came from.”

Other prominent early researchers, many of whom were NHMRC Fellows, included Clinical Associate Professor Ted Keogh in Endocrinology, Ray Johnstone in Physiology, Professor Valerie Alder who became Deputy Director of the LEI, and Frank van Bockxmeer in Biochemistry. “It was really those NHMRC Fellows who put research on the map in Western Australia, in my view, because they became competitive, and nationally and internationally established by way of reputation,” Professor Constable says.

By 1983, Professor Constable had founded the Lions Eye Institute and was the Foundation Director of UWA’s Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science.

“I went out and recruited people who had just got a PhD in basic sciences and then set them up and helped them to get established working with the eye. Our model was to back young PhDs and they almost without exception came from the pre-clinical sciences or from microbiology or pathology within the Medical School.”

The model was hugely successful and Professor Constable has been credited with the fact that by the early 1980s ophthalmology had become the largest research consortium in UWA surgery, with the majority of national research funds for surgery going to his specialty. He remained Director of the LEI until 2009.

When some Medical School departments relocated from RPH to the QEII campus in 1983, RPH appointed more clinical-level professors through UWA. Some of the “real gems” of researchers included Professors Roger Taylor in Cardiology, Lawrie Beilin in Medicine, and Byron Kakulas in Neuropathology.

By 1980, research had become far more sophisticated. “It wasn’t the individual professor with a couple of research students doing it, it was ‘let’s solve major problems,’ and that meant a rapid growth in technology and also a critical mass for each research group to be competitive,” Professor Constable says.

“The pioneer who first recognised that in the State without any question was Byron Kakulas.” He showcased his research and sought public funding and went on to found the Australian Neuromuscular Research Institute in 1982.

Obtaining research grants was another matter and has always been difficult. “People never have enough money but it’s not always right that everybody should get fully funded, they’re not all A grades,” the professor says. “Research is elitist and competitive and you can’t apply equity principles to medical research.”

Professor Constable is renowned globally for his research and has received about 30 Australian and international awards for his services to medicine and the wider community. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1988 for service to medicine, particularly in the field of ophthalmology.

Professor Ian Constable


Dr Werner Jaeger

Modern researchers need to be creative when they apply for funding because of the new emphasis on translational research, says Dr Werner Jaeger.

Gone are the days when basic science studies addressing medical issues could attract grants – now the potential clinical outcomes must be shown, he adds.

Dr Jaeger speaks from personal experience. He started out with a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours and moved into benchside research, attaining his PhD from UWA in 2011 under the supervision of Professor Karin Eidne and Associate Professor Kevin Pfleger. He was investigating a particular neurohormonal system in the brain, the orexin system, and how it can be regulated or targeted in three key areas – the regulation of sleep/wake cycles, energy metabolism and addiction.

He followed up by doing two years of post-doctoral work with Associate Professor Pfleger at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and then embarked on the four-year postgraduate Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree at UWA and is now in the final year. Realising the importance of having expertise in clinical research, he chose to undertake a clinical study for his research option during his MD degree and has been working with Clinical Associate Professor Shripada Rao, consultant neonatologist at Princess Margaret Hospital. Already Dr Jaeger has presented some findings at conferences in Perth last year and published an original research article this year.

“Your targets are changing,” he says, explaining that a significant problem when he was approaching the end of his PhD and applying for grants, the National Health and Medical Research Council goals were a lot more clinical. “The vast majority of research is moving towards a clinical-based outcome in the medical research area. The focus is no longer looking at how, for example, certain receptors operate at a physiological level, but how they can be pharmacologically targeted for better clinical outcomes.

“Funding bodies want a clinical problem addressed and research data developed

Then and NowResearcher now

Help with grant applicationsThe Consumer and Community Health Research Network can support you in planning for consumer and community involvement in your grant application.

We can give you advice on developing a plan and budget for involvement activities. We also provide a service to find consumers or community members to review your application to make sure the language used is easily understood, comment on the involvement aspects of the research and provide other additional comments. We also offer training workshops on consumer and community involvement. You can find details for the next workshop on our website

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from that, not the other way around. It’s clinically driven rather than being more scientifically driven. They want to drive the clinical aspect to try to improve patient care, which is vitally important.”

He says while translational medicine is important, basic scientific research needs to occur as “you need to have a delicate balance”. But researchers need to adapt to how funding priorities change and inevitably to what society prioritises with limited funding available, he advises.

He is taking his own advice. “I want to develop my skills in clinical research. I want to become someone who sits in the middle between carrying out benchside medical research and addressing the needs in the clinical environment. For example, if a physician or surgeon has an important clinical question, how can we integrate medical and clinical research to bring better outcomes for patients. At the moment this area isn’t very well catered for.”

Research has evolved in other ways over the decades, he says. “It seems to be a lot faster-paced. I think that is a result of the technology improving and our ability to generate data a lot quicker.”

It is also now very multidisciplinary. “In clinical and benchside research, that’s certainly something that’s become a lot more prevalent,” Dr Jaeger says. “There’s no longer a single person involved in studies.” For example, his latest study involved a neonatologist, a neurosurgeon, a pathologist, resident medical officers and himself.

“And it’s not only at one site, research collaborations for current projects typically occur at multiple sites nationally around the world,” he adds. “That’s certainly how it’s changed from 60 years ago. Again, we’ve got better technology, better abilities to communicate with each other now so that makes research generation and communication a lot easier.”

His love of research stems partly from the challenges. “At the same time, it’s knowing you could have an answer to something in the end. You just have to find the way to work out a problem.”

Research clinically, not scientifically, driven now


Contact us

Faculty of Health and Medical SciencesThe University of Western AustraliaM500, 35 Stirling HighwayCrawley WA 6009 AustraliaTel: +61 8 6457 3928Email: [email protected]

Executive Dean: Professor Wendy ErberHead of Service Delivery: Dr Jan DunphyEditor/Writer: Cathy Saunders

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Thanks to the Development and Alumni Relations team for their great help for this production.

MBBS graduates 6064

• 1957, first intake of medical students• 1963, 10 MBBS graduates (8 male, 2 female)• 2016, 254 MBBS graduates (139 male, 115 female) • Indigenous graduates 6 in 2016 • Rural Clinical School Sites 14

Donations to the 1957 Medical School Appeal: Total £400,000Student Guild street appeal £10,000 (equivalent of $450,000 today)

WA community £400,000 (equivalent of $18,000,000 today)

Population of WA in 1957 639,000

In 1957, 1: 1100 ratio of doctors to WA populationIn 2017, 1: 289 ratio of doctors to WA population

• Nobel Prizes - 2 : Professor Barry Marshall plus co-awardee Emeritus Professor J. Robin Warren, who was awarded an Honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine, UWA

• Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) - 2• Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) - 8• Member of the Order of Australia (AM) - 37• Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) - 11• Rhodes Scholars - 11

20 | MeDeFacts | Volume 23 Number 1 | March 2017

Design: Jacinta Gall | Printer: UniPrint, The University of WA

Update your details at alumni.uwa.edu.au/update or email [email protected]

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MeDeFacts - UWA · 2017-10-04 · achieving its ambition to be a “top 50” university in the world by 2050. Our medical research is already world class and we are currently rated