Dr Andrew McDonald, Dr David McDonald, Dr Cathy McAdam, Dr Paul Bloomfield and Dr Hasantha Gunasekera lead a panel discussion on issues facing the care of the indigenous child in Australian emergency departments.
Speaker biographies:
Andrew McDonald trained as a Paediatrician in Sydney and England, and in 1990 commenced as a Paediatric Staff Specialist at Campbelltown Hospital. Since 1995 he has been visiting Tharawal Aboriginal medical service. He was elected as Labor state MP for Macquarie Fields in 2007, and then again in 2011. From 2008 to 2011, he was Parliamentary Secretary for Health. From 2011 to 2014 he was Shadow Health Minister. Since returning to medicine in 2015 he continues to work at Campbelltown Hospital and Tharawal AMS, and lives in Campbelltown with his wife Jenny, also a Paediatrician. Andrew is a Conjoint Associate Professor at UWS and UNSW, remains a fellow of the RACP, as well as being a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (UK). He likes riding his red bicycle very slowly.
Cathy McAdam is a General Paediatrician whose primary role is Head of General Paediatrics at Monash Children's Hospital in Melbourne. She also spends five weeks per year working as a Paediatrician in the far north of WA in the remote Kimberley region/ Her interest in indigenous health began as a medical student doing an elective with RFDS in Derby, was further enhanced by her time in Alice Springs as a Paediatric Registrar, then developed into a regular appointment as a Paediatrician in the Kimberley for the past 10 years. Cathy has been an APLS instructor since 1998 and enjoys directing the Kimberley course each year.
Hasantha Gunasekera is a General Paediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Westmead and the Child and Adolescent Health Specialty Block Coordinator for the University of Sydney Medical Program. His PhD examined the epidemiology and management of otitis media in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. He is involved in several Aboriginal research and service delivery projects across NSW and is part of the leadership group of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in indigenous children's healthy ears.
Paul Bloomfield is a General Paediatrician based in Orange, NSW. He became an APLS instructor in 2002 and a course director in 2009. His areas of interest include acute paediatrics, newborn resuscitation, developmental paediatrics and soccer.
From the 2015 APLS Paediatric Acute Care Conference in Sydney.