Herstory – Dr Sue Packer AO

Meet Dr Sue Packer AO

Name: Sue Packer AO

Origin: Born 25/02/1942, King George V Hospital in Sydney, (when it was a new hospital!) – it was during WW2 and just after the bombing of Darwin.

University training: Sydney University started in 1960

Year of graduation: 26/1/1966

State membership: ACT & Region

AFMW involvement: Started around 1989 / was past president of MWS ACT and Region; AFMW representative and current role is Public Officer

Speciality Area: Community Paediatrician with special interest in child physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect and child advocacy.

Awards: 

• 1999 with was made a Member of the Order (AM)– for services to paediatrics, child protection and the community – given to her by Governor General Sir William Dean.
• 2013, in ACT was named ‘Citizen of the Year’ in 2013 on Canberra Day. The main consequence of this recognition was chairing the community reference group for the demolition of more than 1000 ACT houses for loose fill asbestos.  Sue’s commitment to this was ongoing until the Group was wound up in July 2023.She continues to participate in an ongoing public health committee which has researchers monitoring any emerging health consequences from this unique asbestos exposure.
• 2019 was made Senior Australian of the Year
• 2021 was given an AO – for advocacy for children.
• The medal was presented in 2022 due to COVID-19.

 

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My Journey

My interest in medicine began when I was around six years old. My mother took me to have a blood test and a female pathologist took my blood after which I turned to mum and said, ‘you never told me there were lady doctors!’ My father’s father was a doctor in UK, but mum had left dad when I was very young. From that time on, medicine and becoming a doctor fascinated me. I was interested in people, their illnesses and how people ‘worked.’ When playing, I used to play doctors and would pretend to extract the doll’s tonsils (after my open ether tonsillectomy!).

Fortunately, mum was a schoolteacher and although in those days, she had been required to retire when she married, the war gave women like my mother opportunities to resume their careers, due to workforce shortages.  Becoming a single parent meant mum struggled financially bringing up my sister and me. She was on the staff at my school and, although for a time I had her as my teacher, she never treated me differently and I enjoyed having her as my teacher.

Mum brought us up encouraging us to pursue a career irrespective of having children, though she reassured us repeatedly that having us was the best experience of her life.

Mum encouraged us to be guided by our interests in our choice of career and was thrilled that I received a Commonwealth scholarship to go to university and become a doctor.

I was very determined to study medicine and the first time I sat my Leaving exams, I qualified for a teacher’s scholarship but not a Commonwealth one, so I repeated the year, then got the Commonwealth scholarship in 1960 and started the six-year medical course. I studied at Sydney University, commencing in 1960 and graduated in January 1966.

My family lived in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, so I boarded near Sydney University in an Anglican hostel across the road from the university. Without my encouragement, some of the undergraduate students there started using me as an informal mentor. I agreed I would listen to their problems as long as I could keep on writing up my practical reports for my classes whilst they talked!

I was one of the first group of students since WW2 to study at the Concord (then Repatriation) Hospital. There were sixteen students and about a thousand patients, which gave us invaluable experience and we received phenomenal teaching.

After graduating I became a junior resident at St Vincent’s hospital in 1966. We treated many local vagrants, including methylated spirits addicts, in the busy casualty department. Upon completing two years there, I intended to become a GP (the only doctors I was familiar with). There was no vocational training to be a GP then- just hang up your plate and start! I knew I was ill-prepared to do this so I did a six month obstetrics and gynaecology rotation, then a six month GP locum and found I then had to complete 12 months paediatrics, as their six month rotations had ceased. This one year drifted into becoming my choice of specialisation as a paediatrician and, after acquiring my MRACP, I went to the UK in 1972 for further training. This was where I met my husband, an electronics engineer. Whilst in the UK we had two sons. Then my mum in Australia became ill, so I came back with the children in 1980 and settled in the ACT.  My husband completed his PhD, then sold our UK house and came to Australia to join us.  We then had our daughter in 1982.

Initially, whilst the children were tiny, I did weekend locums for the six ACT paediatricians then in Canberra- taking the weeks between the very busy weekends to recover! I then accepted the new position of Community Paediatrician for the ACT, which had just had self-government imposed. I was employed in two half- time positions. The first involved establishing community paediatrics and community child health in ACT. The other commitment was to set up a child abuse medical assessment unit. I had earlier been involved, with a group of GPs, in the late 1980s, providing an assessment service when child sexual abuse was finally being addressed as a genuine issue. We set this service up because at that time, when a child disclosed sexual abuse or it was suspected, they were seen by the police doctors, who worked in an inappropriate adult focused environment at the police station- and they had no experience examining children.

What stands out to me now is that most aspects of my professional life involved dealing with troubled people. I was continually reminded how hard life was for some and increasingly used my developing clinical and advocacy skills attempting to make things better and fairer for them.

Tragically, my husband, who was younger than me, died suddenly and unexpectedly of what was most likely a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, after cycling with friends.  We had already dealt with the trauma of his prostate cancer diagnosis five years earlier, and things seemed to be going well, so this was a terrible blow. Our kids were in their late teens and early twenties. I was extremely busy working in child protection by this time.

 

Mentors that made a difference

Of the six hundred and fifty medical students in my first-year class, only three hundred graduated, of whom thirty were women. I found no mentors during that time, though the student camaraderie was helpful. Four of the sixteen clinical students at Concord were female. Although there weren’t any inspirational mentors in my university days, I found it very special that a zoology lecturer in my first year was “Tom the Naturalist” from the extremely popular children’s radio program “The Argonauts”. This program had run for many years but died with the arrival of TV.  It spoke to the value of this program in promoting science, music, art and literature that it was later recognised as being hugely influential to many later prominent people at a time geographical isolation prevented many children from acquiring such learning. A different world!

After my year of Paediatrics, I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted to do but received a lot of encouragement from the professor who had established the Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital, Professor Beveridge.  He was the closest I had to an early mentor, and it was at that time I chose to become a paediatrician. Professor Beverage subsequently recommended me for a paediatric gastroenterology job in London at Great Ormond Street.  Once again, the social and emotional aspects of this gastroenterology placement made a deep impression on me. My research project there was in coeliac disease, which till that time had been believed to be a disease that children would outgrow by about two years of age. We now know it is lifelong.

Around this time, I had met my husband in London.  Together we had two sons and daughter and we eventually ended up living in ACT, where all my family lived.

Prof David Hull, who was head of Paediatrics at Nottingham University was an impressive man and another of my mentors.  He gave me the idea that hospitals should be seen as centres focusing on specific health issues for children and the bulk of their care and management should be provided in the community where the children lived and had access to a huge range of supports. This concept was pivotal in establishing community clinics and installing clinics in schools for children.

Prior to that I had met a very special mentor, Dr Alan Walker, whom I met on rotation to Darwin immediately after I finished my paediatric training.  Alan was another amazing man and wonderful mentor. At that stage was the only paediatrician working in the top half of the NT. He quietly pioneered efforts to improve indigenous health of children and their families and was inspirational. We remained good friends until he died years later.

My last mentor was Dr John Boots. He was one of the most inspirational men I’ve ever met. He was allocated as my supervisor/mentor when I became so immersed in child abuse work. He also did excellent work with team building for the new child abuse unit. I could ring him any time for advice. Even being able to share tragic and impossible situations was helpful.

When my husband died suddenly, he rang me once a week for the next year and I only realised in retrospect how helpful that was. Sadly, he died of malignant melanoma of the ocular lens a few years later.  John made it possible for me to do the work I did for so long.  Working in child protection was very difficult and after a particularly challenging inquest, the Unit organised for me to have a day with John in Canberra to talk through the difficult experience and enable me to continue. It is amazing how beneficial sensitive, supportive mentoring can be when dealing with such challenging situations.

The ACT and Region Medical Women’s Society has also played a big part in my career for over thirty years. I became ACT President in the early years.  The ACT branch focus remains being supportive to the members and encouraging women to be brave enough to pursue their medical dreams from student experiences to setting up specialist practices. They were different times as a woman doctor when the Society began. Through the ACT MWS, I have made lifelong friends.

 

Things  I Learnt

• You can’t take I all upon yourself in your work. You cannot be responsible for everything.
• From my work on childhood trauma, together with meeting many older people as Senior Australian of the Year, I have learned so much about the similarities between old people’s brains and infants’ brains. At both ends of life the brains are changing rapidly, making them acutely vulnerable and in need of the most sensitive caring environment. Unfortunately, both groups have the lowest paid, least supported workers trying to look after them. It must change. One lot have their lives ahead of them. The others have contributed so much to all of us.

 

My Pearls of Wisdom for Others

• You can’t do any of this challenging work unless you look after yourself.
• Don’t believe anything is impossible- just be prepared to modify what is possible. But if something seems like a good idea, pursue it rigorously – even if you end up uncomfortably challenged! You make amazing discoveries along the way.
• Analyse what you are doing/ achieving and question yourself and the system along the way. You are likely to have to change direction and might even have to change your priorities.
• Being passionate about what you do helps you enjoy what you achieve.
• Learn to enjoy being a bit crazy in order to recharge and refocus. One distraction in our Unit was a “bake-off day”- another was choreographing shows for the Christmas party.
• We are community animals and need to learn how to support each other joyfully as well as in crises. We work better when we work as a connected community.
• Medicine is a vocation. It is more than money and prestige and success. It’s about the joy of giving back and learning how to do this most sensitively and effectively.

 

Sue Packer AO

 

 

Thank you Sue

 

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About ‘Herstory’

The online AFMW Herstory E-Book, gives AFMW members the opportunity to contribute to the AFMW oral tapestry, by forming a compilation of  ‘our mentoring stories’, in which we  honour those who have changed our lives. Making this an online AFMW story book, encourages us each to consider contributing to building this over the years, into a collection of medical women’s ‘key take home messages’, as we share the wisdom we each have gained from our own lived experiences.  The ‘golden nugget of wisdom’ that we would share with someone who asked us about what we have learned.

Add Your Story

If you would like to contribute your story, please download the Herstory template (Word doc), add your details and return the completed form to [email protected]. Please also submit a photo of yourself with this. It can be a ‘selfie’ taken with a good camera that you would be happy to have others see.

 

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