Dr Anne Tonkin AO
BMBS ’82, PhD(Med) ’92
By David Sly
When Dr Anne Tonkin AO was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2023 for her distinguished service to medical professional regulation, tertiary education and clinical pharmacology, she says it reflected her passion for analysis and evaluation. And the origins of these traits can be found in her medical education that began at Flinders University.
“Perhaps it has been my analytical mind that has propelled me through this career journey – but I know that style of thinking was nurtured during my student years at Flinders and with the guidance of my medical mentors at the University,” says Dr Tonkin.
After starting at Flinders in 1972, undertaking a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in biology, Dr Tonkin was part of Flinders University’s third intake of medical students in 1976, a dynamic period when the nexus of teaching new medical students, carrying out research and undertaking clinical practice at Flinders Medical Centre was being inexorably fused.
“It was a great time to be at Flinders and we were all so enthusiastic to be at the heart of this very new concept that allowed students to have access to a working hospital, and for us to see the real-world application of what we were learning rather than just having theoretical tuition in a classroom,” says Dr Tonkin. “Having the hospital and the medical school in the same building and the integrated structure of the curriculum made it really easy for us to have a seamless learning experience in medicine.
“I think it gave me a really good fundamental background forwhat I went on to do in my career. It certainly broadened my horizons about what I thought I could do in medicine, because my education gave me a more expansive view of what was possible with my skill set.”
Shift from Practitioner to Academic
Dr Tonkin trained as a general physician with a sub-specialty in clinical pharmacology. “A really important mentor of mine at Flinders University was the late Professor Lindon Wing, whose approach to pharmacology made the subject utterly fascinating to\ me,” she says. “It set me on a path of pursuing a particular interest.”
However, the focus of Dr Tonkin’s medical roles soon diversified. Her shift from medical practitioner to academic began after she finished her PhD and was awarded a fellowship in England for two years – at the same time that an academic position came up at Adelaide University in pharmacology, which was her specialty.
“While I really enjoyed academic pursuits, the bit that I enjoyed most was teaching, and the position at Adelaide involved quite a lot of teaching, along with research.
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible to diversify in that way if I hadn’t been at Flinders, where I greatly valued the role of
people in those split research/teaching positions and had seen how they provided such an important link between the hospital and the medical school.”
New Era of Medical Drugs
Dr Tonkin’s arrival at Adelaide University’s pharmacology department coincided with the dawn of an important new era of medical drugs, which included the introduction of statinsto lower high cholesterol in the blood and ACE inhibitors to address heart failure and high blood pressure.
“A surge in the importance of pharmacology placed our work in the spotlight, and the acceleration of new drug development also increased the volume of drugs being evaluated – which also required the closest scrutiny,” she says. “I got involved quite quickly with drug regulation and served terms on the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, and provided evaluation services to the Therapeutic Goods Administration.”
Through Dr Tonkin’s work on drug regulation, she was asked to be involved in national committees to assess new drug registration. “For evaluations in the pre-digital age, I would be delivered a load of up to 19 boxes containing A4 ring binders filled with data about a new drug, and I needed to distil all that information into a 20-page report with a conclusion about whether the data supported the drug being registered or not,” she explains, “and I really enjoyed that challenge. I like to make order out of chaos. I’m one of those strange people who enjoys regulation, and I suppose that led me down the path of being involved in more and more committees.”
Decision Making at the Highest Level
While Dr Tonkin worked as a clinical academic in the Adelaide Medical School for 22 years, becoming Professor in Medical Education with responsibilities for curriculum planning and implementation, she also served on the Australian Medical Council and had longstanding involvement with its accreditation processes for medical schools and specialist colleges.
Dr Tonkin then became a member of the South Australian Medical Board from 2009 and, when a new national board responsible for registration and regulation of all doctors in Australia was launched
in 2010, she continued as a South Australian representative. She then joined the National Board in 2015 and was appointed Chair of the Medical Board of Australia in 2018.
“It marked a different phase of my career, towards the end of my clinical career after having practised at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for more than 25 years, but I enjoyed the challenges that come with decision-making at the highest level,” says Dr Tonkin.
“My brain probably works that way quite naturally, but it has definitely been enhanced by my training and the experiences I had as a young practitioner. I’ve been able to carry everything I’ve learned over to the medical boards, and even though it’s focused on a totally different kind of regulation, it still requires me to look at a lot of information and distil the important parts quite quickly. It certainly helps that I’ve learned to read very quickly, which is especially useful when some of our medical board meetings have agendas that are 3,000-pages long. It’s not for everybody, but I love it.”