Biography

Dr Tim Butson is a Rehabilitation Medicine Physician based on the Sunshine Coast, with a special interest in concussion and brain injury. He works across both public and private settings and is a Fellow of the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine (RACP).

Dr Butson is passionate about improving outcomes for people with concussion and persistent post-concussive symptoms. He runs both public and private multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) dedicated to concussion rehabilitation and is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee for Concussion Australia. He is actively involved in developing models of care and interdisciplinary approaches to support recovery, and collaborates closely with physiotherapists, neuropsychologists, GPs, and other specialists.

He completed his medical degree at James Cook University in 2013, followed by junior doctor training at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, where a rotation in the Spinal Injuries Unit sparked his interest in Rehabilitation Medicine. He has also completed a Master of Sports Medicine at the University of Melbourne and a Diploma of Sports and Exercise Medicine through the University of Otago.

Dr Butson values a team-based approach to patient care and has a strong commitment to evidence-based practice. He is also a national medical classifier for paratriathlon and supports athletes with disability, with experience in spasticity and exercise management.

Lay summary

I have been accepted to undertake a fellowship in Concussion through the University of Toronto. The fellowship is a combination of clinical work and research work to further understand and learn about concussion and mild traumatic brain injury.

Biography

Abdul, a PhD candidate at Monash University, leads innovative research into umbilical cord blood-derived cell therapies for neonatal brain injury. He heads the ALLO trial, testing allogeneic cells for preterm brain injury, and the STELLAR trial, exploring autologous therapy for fetal stroke. These trials aim to bring regenerative medicine into the neonatal intensive care unit. In parallel, Abdul is advancing preclinical science through novel ovine models that replicate real-world neonatal conditions. His inflammation-induced preterm brain injury model mimics long-term effects of neonatal inflammation, while his large animal model of intraventricular haemorrhage recreates brain bleeds seen in extremely preterm infants. These platforms are essential for evaluating next-generation therapies and bridging the translational gap. By uniting cutting-edge clinical trials with sophisticated animal models, Abdul’s work is shaping the future of neonatal care and offering new hope for improved outcomes in the most vulnerable infants.

Lay summary

Alongside his clinical work, Abdul is pushing the boundaries of preclinical research. He has developed a novel ovine model of inflammation-induced preterm brain injury, mimicking the long-term effects of neonatal inflammation on the developing brain. Additionally, he is spearheading a large animal model of intraventricular haemorrhage, replicating the devastating brain bleeds seen in extremely preterm infants. These models provide a critical platform for testing next-generation therapies and bridging the gap between laboratory discoveries and real-world neonatal care. By combining cutting-edge preclinical studies with innovative clinical trials, Abdul’s research is shaping the future of neonatal brain injury treatment, bringing hope for better outcomes in the most vulnerable infants.

Biography

Following the completion of undergraduate degrees in Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacology, Bryan finished his medical training at the University of Auckland and is completing specialist training in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Bryan has a keen interest in Aviation Medicine and has completed his Graduate Diploma of Occupational Medicine and Masters of Aviation Medicine with the University of Otago. He carries experience in industry as a medical officer with Air New Zealand and has been in the Defence Force since 2013. Bryan is also passionate about clinical governance and regulatory aspects of medicine and holds certifying designation for various industries including aviation, maritime, and is a designated Medical Review Officer (MRO). Bryan's current goal is to further the understanding and impact of the rapid rise in information technology and capabilities of machine learning on modern occupational and regulatory medicine practice.

Lay summary

Attendance at courses designed to explore the complex interplay between medicolegal factors and the rapid rise of datasets and outcomes derived from machine-learning. The widespread use of big data and narrow-focus AI is anticipated to rapidly change the regulatory landscape pertinent to how occupational medicine and medical certification is practiced in Australasian. This impact will extend to how we assess and certify workers operating in some of Australasia's most safety-sensitive roles and industries, whilst maintaining an evidence-based and discriminatory-free approach.

Biography

Ranjit is a dual-training Sexual Health and Infectious Diseases registrar. He has an active interest in research and is particularly interested in HIV medicine, blood-borne viruses and antimicrobial stewardship. His other interests include health policy, social equity, and the provision of all-encompassing sexual healthcare. He completed his Masters of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a teaching qualification at Queen Mary University of London, and enjoys teaching medical students alongside his clinical work.

Lay summary

One of the mandatory requirements for Sexual Health training is this Certificate, which upskills doctors in reproductive and sexual health using the latest clinical research. This blended learning course comprises self-paced online learning, interactive live case discussions, reflective learning, and assessment.

The theory course content includes:

• Contraceptive options
• Current guidelines for STI screening including diagnosis and management
• Unintended pregnancy options
• Working with diverse groups including adolescents and people living with disability
• Updates on the National Cervical Screening Program
• Menopause
• Men’s health
• Other topics in the area of reproductive and sexual health

The supervised clinical attachment requires participants to attend a clinical skills workshop day to demonstrate their understanding of essential practical skills prior to their placement. Participants demonstrate they meet core competencies across a 32-hour placement in Family Planning Australia clinics and will gain hands-on experience with the appropriate range of reproductive and sexual health issues required to complete clinical placements. This may include history taking, contraception, cervical screening, STI/BBV, pregnancy options, and common andrology.

Biography

I completed my medical training at the University of New South Wales in 2008. I did my GP training in Newcastle before becoming a Fellow for the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (FRACGP) in 2014. I am also a GP supervisor with the RACGP.

Lay summary

This week long program will help assist me in my studies relating to occupational hygiene. I will have the opportunity to explore more in depth the role of an occupational hygienist I would otherwise not be exposed to in a clinic setting. I hope to strengthen my understanding in biological monitoring and health surveillance with a range of hazards including asbestos, silica and more uncommon hazards such as radiation.

Biography

Lay summary

Children and young people in out-of-home care (“care”) are one of the most vulnerable patient populations with respect to poor health outcomes across all domains of health. Assessing and addressing health needs at entry to care is recommended by the RACP. Since 2013, the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) has delivered over 500 comprehensive health needs assessments for children who have entered care through the Pathway to Good Health (PTGH) clinics. Findings from my doctoral research regarding access to timely and routine health assessment upon entry to care led to a statewide expansion of PTGH clinics. I am leading the Victorian Centre of Health Leadership for Children in Care in supporting the statewide rollout with capacity building and clinical expertise.

I want to maximise the quality of our comprehensive health assessments at RCH, and subsequently across Victoria. The first step is updating the National Clinical Assessment Framework (2011), using qualitative health services research methods to understand and incorporate the expertise of healthcare workers and foster and kinship carers. I will interview carers who have brought a child to our clinic, to understand what is important to them with respect to the who, when, where, what and how of comprehensive health assessment. I will also analyse the views of healthcare workers who have been conducting comprehensive health assessments in PTGH clinics to understand their perspectives on the same domains. The findings will result in updated guidance for comprehensive health assessment and a tool that can be used to audit PTGH clinics.

Biography

Dr Aaron Ooi is an early career, dual-trained General and Community Child Health Paediatrician based in Rotorua and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland. He completed postgraduate study and a fellowship in Medical Education during his training in New Zealand, followed by an integrated clinical fellowship in Neuropsychiatry, Developmental and Social Paediatrics, and Quality Improvement in Vancouver, Canada.

Driven by a commitment to breaking down silos between General, Developmental and Behavioural Paediatrics, and Child and Youth Mental Health, Dr Ooi has been recognised with several local and national awards for his contributions to teaching and research. His recent work focuses on improving access and creating equitable, inclusive healthcare environments, particularly for neurodiverse and marginalised populations, and applying systems-based quality improvement approaches to enhance educational culture for junior doctors in regional settings.

Lay summary

While Quality Improvement (QI) is widely taught in healthcare, its application to improving medical education within clinical services remains underexplored. Our project, based in a regional paediatric department, applies QI methodologies to define the current state of medical education within our service, as part of the overall vision to enhance the educational experiences for Resident Medical Officers (RMOs).

Following a scoping literature review, our methods to undertake a current state analysis included a multi-faceted approach, including:

• A stocktake of departmental educational activities,
• In-depth surveys of RMOs and Senior Medical Officers (SMOs) to assess learning needs and perspectives,
• Insights from our recent RACP Accreditation Report,
• A review of postgraduate paediatric diploma curricula from the Universities of Auckland and Otago, and
• Focus group discussions within scheduled departmental meetings,

These findings will be utilised to inform the generation of a driver diagram, an established tool utilised in QI, to identify key drivers influencing educational experiences of RMOs within our service. This driver diagram generated will subsequently inform the development of targeted change ideas with iterative evaluation cycles, in aligning with our overall vision.

To our knowledge, our project is the first to explore the application of QI to medical education within an Aotearoa context and is unique in documenting a system-wide perspective of medical education within a service. We envision that this project will provide a model for clinical educators to utilise a structured, evidence-evidence based approach to systematically understand and optimise medical education within their respective services.

2024

Dr Chang Ho Yoon
2024 Richard Kemp Memorial Fellowship ($5,000)
Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene

Dr Tobias Vickers
2024 RACP AChSHM Study Grant ($4,000)
Master of Public Health (Epidemiology)

Dr Abdul Razak
2024 Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Cell Therapies for Preterm Brain Injury

Dr Yudish Soonarane
2024 Queensland Regional Committee Educational Development Grant ($10,000)
Epidemiology of Diabetic Foot Disease in Central Queensland

Dr Sean Lance
2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Education Development Grant (NZD$10,000)
EEG Fellowship

Dr Pramod Pharande
2024 RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($5,000)
Paracetamol and Patent Ductus Arteriosus closure: Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic study

Dr Teresa Boyle
2024 RACP AFRM Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Developing a sustainable approach to research capacity building for the Queensland Branch, Australasian Faculty Rehabilitation Medicine, AFRM

Dr Nicole Wong
2024 RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($5,000)
Experiences in the acute hospital setting for children in out-of-home care: a scoping review

2023

Dr Ei Aung
2023 RACP AChSHM Education Development Grant ($4,000)
Detection of Treponema pallidum at asymptomatic oral, anal, and vaginal sites in men and women reporting sexual contact with syphilis

Dr Simone Barry
2023 Skilled Medical Scholarship for Advancement of Indigenous Health ($5,000)
Shared Visions - A Health Education Project Designed to Improve Knowledge, Early Case Detection, and Treatment Adherence in Remote Indigenous Australians with Tuberculosis

Dr Sally Gordon
2023 RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($10,000)
Multistakeholder Mapping of Systems for Early Child Development in Tanzania

Dr Lisa Hong
2023 Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Optimising Earlier Diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy by the Utilisation of Early Biomarkers in High Risk Infants

Dr Sophie Jessop
2023 Skilled Medical Scholarship for the Advancement of Indigenous Health ($5,000)
Educational tools for Aboriginal children with cancer

Dr Jian Li
2023 Aotearoa New Zealand Education Development Grant (NZD$3,850)
Graduate Certificate in Biostatics

Dr Alum Sheila Uyirwoth
2023 RACP AFOEM Education Development Grant ($10,000)
AFOEM Advanced Trainee Education Development Grant

2021

Dr Davina Buntsma
2021 | RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($10,000)
The HEAT Study - Hospital Experiences of Adolescents at Top End Health

Dr Keith Hall
2021 | RACP AChSHM Study Grant ($2,500)
What methods are used to notify people of their contact with an STI prompting them to attend SSHC and how soon after do they attend?

Dr Gopakumar Hariharan
2021 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($5000)
Implementation of the ONESIM interprofessional obstetric and neonatal workshop in rural Queensland

Dr Priyanka Kapadia
2021 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($5000)
Neonatal Hemodynamics Subspecialty Fellowship and Neonatal Hemodynamics/Transport Fellowship - University of Toronto

Dr Lucy Loft
2021 | RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($5,000)
Relationship between Acute Maternal Chorioamnionitis and Extremely Preterm Neonatal Respiratory Outcomes: A Retrospective Audit

Dr David Youssef
2021 | RACP Paediatric Small Study Grant ($5,000)
Paediatric outcomes of congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries in Canada

2020

Dr Moayed Adnan Alawami
2020 | Queensland Regional Committee Educational Development Grant ($10,000)
Master of Biostatistics

Dr Harry Ho Chow
2020 | AFOEM Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Development of a machine learning model for real-time prediction of anthropogenic air pollution in Japan (Master of Occupational and Environmental Health, Monash University)

Dr Myra Hardy
2020 | Richard Kemp Memorial Fellowship ($5000)
Paediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship at the British Columbia Children's Hospital and University of British Columbia

Dr Pramod Pharande
2020 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Evaluation of an interprofessional obstetric and neonatal emergency simulation program in India

2019

Dr Malcolm Richard Battin
2019 | New Zealand Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Quality Improvement Science and Systems Analysis

Dr Nicholas Comninos
2019 | RACP AChSHM Study Grant ($4,000)
Participation at IANS 2019 European High Resolution Anoscopy Workshop (PDF) | Final Report

Associate Professor Louise Conwell (University College London Institute of Child Health, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children)
2019 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Observership – Neonatal Hypoglycaemia and Congenital Hyperinsulinism (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Alison Rutherford
2019 | Richard Kemp Memorial Fellowship ($5,000)
Clinical attachment in complex HIV medicine and clinic management, UK(PDF)| Final Report

2018

Dr Abraham Patrick Arulanandam
2018 | AFRM Education Development Grant ($3000)
Advanced Qualitative Health Research (Sydney University) and Introduction to Mixed Methods Research (Harvard Catalyst online course) (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Catherine Field
2018 | RACP AFOEM Education Development Grant ($7000)
Radiation Emergency Medicine and Advanced Radiation Medicine courses (PDF) | Final Report

Associate Professor Michael Gabbett
2018 | Queensland State Committee Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Physician Workforce Capability Building in Genomics

Dr Atul Malhotra
2018 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Teaching life saving childbirth skills to medical and nursing students in a low to middle income country

Dr Kate Scoles
2018 | RACP AchSHM Study Grant ($4000)
Masters of Sexual and Reproductive Health, specialising in HIV and STIs

Dr Angela Wills
2018 | AFRM Education Development Grant ($4450)
MSK Ultrasound course (PDF) | Final Report

2017

Professor Fary Khan
2017 | RACP AFRM Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Development of training module for rehabilitation physicians for the management of disaster victims (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Claire Lawley
2017 | M D Silberberg Study Grant ($5000)
Echocardiography in Congenital Heart Disease at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Atul Malhotra
2017 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Improving maternal and neonatal outcomes through interprofessional simulation education in rural India

2016

Dr Pearl Chung
2016 | RACP AFRM Education Development Grant ($10,000)
Clinical Efficacy of Pharmacotherapy in Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Patricia Collie
2016 | Macquarie Health Corporation Gaston Bauer Work Shadow Grant ($3000)
Visit various hospitals in the Sydney Metropolitan Area and Newcastle in order to increase skills in inpatient consultation liaison with complex patients

Dr Atul Malhotra
2016 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($10,000)
Teaching neonatal resuscitation and recognition of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy skills to traditional birth attendants in Rural India

Dr Manaswi Pathik
2016 | M D Silberberg Study Grant ($5000)
Three-Dimensional Wave mapping of Human Persistent Atrial Fibrillation(PDF) | Final Report

Dr Peter Snelling (Canada)
2016 | Queensland State Committee Educational Development Grant ($10,000)
Paediatric Emergency Medicine Point-of-Care Ultrasound (PEM POCUS) Traineeship (PDF) | Final Report

2015

Dr Sue Inglis
2015 | AFRM Education Development Scholarship ($10,000)
Education module and resource material in rehabilitation in rural/remote communities 'Bridging the Gap' (linking with public hospitals and community services in the Northern Territory and Queensland)

Dr Amy Keir (The Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide SA)
2015 | Eric Burnard Fellowship ($5000)
NeoBolus Fluid bolus therapy in neonates: A mutli-centre, prospective cross-sectional study (PDF) | Final Report

Dr Minainyo Roberts (Monash Centre for Occupational & Environmental Health, Monash University, Melbourne VIC)
2015 | AFOEM Education Development Scholarship ($10,000)
Occupational injury risk among ambulance officers & paramedics compared with other healthcare workers in Victoria, Australia: analysis of workers’ compensation claims

2014

Dr Helen Benham (Harvard Medical School, Boston USA)
2014 | Queensland State Committee Educational Development (Study) Grant ($10,000)
Harvard Medical School Global Clinical Scholars Research Training Program (GCSRT)

Associate Professor Rosemary Nixon (The Skin and Cancer Foundation VIC)
2014 | AFOEM Education Development Grant ($5000)
Educational development in occupational dermatology: creation of a webinar with unlimited internet access for trainees and occupational physicians via the College (or our own) website

Dr Nicholas Turnball (The Warwick Hospital, UK)
2014 | NZ Education Development Grant ($5000)
Dermatopathology Fellowship; BerEP4 and CD34 immunostaining distinguishes basaloid trichilemmoma from basal cell carcinoma; An immunohistochemical study of trichoepithelioma and tricheopithelioma like basal cell carcinoma