What is your role and what does your work focus on?
My role as a respiratory and sleep physician and researcher is a busy and intellectually satisfying one. Each week and sometimes every day is different and brings new challenges and areas for growth. I work in the public hospital system and in private practice and do research work too and I am the current President of the Australasian Sleep Association so every day is different. It could be seeing patients, supervising junior medical staff on the ward or in the clinic, teaching medical students, doing ward rounds, writing grants or papers, chairing meetings. My current research work focuses on sleep apnoea and sleep epidemiology but I am also the Research Lead for the Department of Respiratory, Sleep Medicine and Ventilation at SALHN so have responsibility to advise our registrars on their research projects which can encompass a wide range of respiratory or sleep-related subjects. I also supervise 4 PhD students with 3/4 being clinically trained and try to meet regularly with them.
Where did you work and / or study before joining CMPH / Flinders? I did my medical training at the University of Adelaide and then specialist training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth. My PhD was on Gene therapy of Lung malignancy through University of WA. I then moved to Harvard School of Public Health in Boston for post-doctoral work on occupational epidemiology. I ran a study of diesel bus mechanics and quantified biomarkers of oxidative injury during the work week- this entailed hiring an RV van and driving to various bus depots around Massachusetts at all hours of the day and night. I then moved back to Perth in 2003 and during this time was involved in developing and leading the Western Australian Sleep Health study (a large cohort of sleep apnoea patients) as well as working clinically. In 2011 I moved to the University of Toronto and was the Clinical Lead of the Ontario Health Study and we recruited approximately 250,000 subjects to this study and collected questionnaires, blood samples and lung function on many of them. I was also Director of Sleep Medicine at Women’s College Hospital. In 2014 after 18 years away I moved back to Adelaide and started working privately and publicly as a sleep and respiratory physician and I began working at Flinders University.
What inspired you to pursue a career in your current field, and how has your passion evolved over time? I like variety in everything I do and respiratory and sleep medicine encompasses all age groups and different diseases, cancer, asthma, infections etc so it’s interesting and every day is different. I have been fortunate over time to have focused on different research areas over time- I started out in lung malignancy and immunology, then occupational epidemiology, then sleep epidemiology and sleep genetics and now I feel I have an understanding of most areas of respiratory medicine. The overarching theme is a passion for learning and confidence in my abilities to apply scientific principles which I learned during and after my PhD.
Can you share a memorable experience or project from your career that had a significant impact on you or the community?
I think my time as Co-Chair of the Guideline Leadership Group of the National Covid-19 Clinical Evidence taskforce from 2020 until 2023 was a life-changing experience. We met weekly as a group of clinicians to develop clinical and management living guidelines to assist in the management of COVID-19 which were updated weekly as Australia experienced the 1st and subsequent waves of COVID-19. This effort was hard work but fulfilling and I learnt many new skills including how to lead and how to encourage consensus from a group of clinicians with differing views. As peer-reviewed evidence started to come in from our international colleagues we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when we realised we had access to therapies that worked. In Australia, we were able to learn from our international colleagues and this definitely saved lives. Our ability to recommend therapies that worked based on scientific evidence and to get this to doctors on the frontline promptly and efficiently worked and connected Australian clinicians during a really challenging time. In fact many international doctors used our guidelines
Another example
I was involved in the filming of Australia’s Sleep Revolution with Michael Mosley for SBS as part of my work at Flinders University and because of my clinical role as a sleep physician. Filming occurred between January and March and we tried to improve the sleep of many poor sleepers. This series will be aired in 2024. In my role as featured co-host I had to develop new skills in front of the camera and that was challenging. I suspect that my work on the series will help to increase awareness of Australians as to the importance of sleep for good health and elevate sleep alongside diet and exercise as one of the 3 pillars of good health.
How do you like to relax or spend your spare time? I love relaxing at home with my 2 chocolate labradors Toby and Josh, named after my favourite characters from the West Wing TV series. I enjoy my two bookclubs (fiction and non-fiction) and catching up with school and university friends. I enjoy travelling, streaming the latest series on TV and I run a gin distillery with friends (Three Valleys gin) which was a COVID project which has turned into a successful business.