Now in Remission by Ken Clezy

Author:Ken Clezy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, BG, BIO017000
ISBN: 9781743051146
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2012-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Dean and professor of surgery

I came full circle to find changes afoot in Port Moresby. David Hamilton had looked after my unit well, and with his wife, the former Julie Christie who had been our physiotherapist on the leprosy team in Madang, moved on to the surgeon’s post in Rabaul, where their exceptional skills and personalities endeared them to the Tolai.

On the leprosy scene members of an Apex Club in Port Moresby were the driving force behind an international Apexian fundraising campaign to construct a leprosy ward and associated facilities at PMGH. Following the recent closure of the Gemo hospital, and with our general wards chronically full, we needed space for operative or other leprosy patients needing hospitalisation. We already ran an outpatient clinic in rather cramped and otherwise unsatisfactory quarters, so the welcome self-contained new building allowed us to concentrate all our activities under one roof. Valerie Taylor was nurse in charge, and Trugam Amos, our ex-patient from Madang, managed the physiotherapy and footwear, looked after the garden, and served as a useful conduit for information that might otherwise have passed us by.

After Doug Russell retired a university physician with an interest in leprosy (successively Ian Riley, Iain Aitken and Hugo Ree) dealt with the medical aspects of our patients’ disease. We made rounds together, and between us ran a lively Wednesday morning clinic that saw new patients every week, many from villages known for 50 years to have an unusually high incidence of leprosy. I’ve seen similar clinics in many parts of the world, but rarely such a variety of clinical material as came to us at the Apex Ward. Our patients liked the arrangement as much as we did, and tended to come straight to us whatever their problems, be they leprosy-related or not. The bonhomie and social solidarity of Apex Ward made working there a particular pleasure, and provided an ideal atmosphere in which to instruct our medical students.

And I had returned to find changes in the medical school, where various personality conflicts and minor imperfections of teamwork were making unpleasant ripples. Even in our small faculty we had fair copies of the irresistible force and the immovable object. The dean, a Sudanese professor of pathology, was taking up a position in Australia, and there appeared to be no suitable replacement available. Those otherwise well qualified also had their own very visible barrows to push, and undoubtedly this would have made them generally unacceptable. It was a part-time position and had to be filled internally. To my great surprise somebody suggested that I allow my name to go forward.

The notion that someone who was Health Department rather than academic staff might be acceptable to the university was novel, but Ken Inglis, the vice-chancellor, had no difficulty with the idea, so more or less by default I became dean in 1974. I didn’t pretend to bring any particularly appropriate skills to the position, and wouldn’t have accepted the appointment had I not known that the dean’s secretary was a self-starter and well able to think outside the square.

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