Monash Intensivist honoured through University Fellowship

Assoc Prof Parkin

Monash University alumnus and Honorary Intensivist at Monash Health Associate Professor Geoffrey Parkin was honoured as an exceptional leader through a University Fellowship last week.

The award of Fellowship by the University recognizes distinguished service or achievement in the arts, sciences, professions or civil society for the benefit of the community. This award recognized a long and distinguished career as clinician, teacher and researcher in Intensive Care Medicine.

Undoubtedly the top career highlight has been “working for forty years with the best nurses and doctors you could find” Dr Parkin said.

“Critical illness sometimes puts patients, relatives and staff under stress. With knowledge, compassion and teamwork comes therapeutic success. Care is enormously rewarding and we have had much joy.  The award of a Monash Fellowship is essentially a shared acknowledgement of all those contributors.”

Dr Parkin says he was fortunate that the new specialty of intensive care arrived at the right time in his early postgraduate career. His choice of specialty led to a career as head of new and emerging intensive care units in Melbourne, as ICU Registrar, Royal Melbourne Hospital (1972-1973), then Foundation Director of the Intensive Care Unit, Prince Henry’s Hospital (1974-1989). This era saw remarkable change in the ability to support the critically ill.

A period as Head, Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, Alfred Hospital (1985) led to an invitation to create an Intensive Care Unit at Cabrini Hospital (1985-2008). Cabrini has become a most successful venture for the Monash medical community.

Dr Parkin was again fortunate to be appointed as Foundation Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Monash Medical Centre (1988-2002) continuing as staff specialist until 2007. Looking back he says it was a great opportunity to be involved in another new venture.

The national Intensive Care Diploma examination was initiated at Prince Henry’s Hospital, Melbourne in the late with one or two candidates. It has now expanded to two examinations per year attracting 70-80 candidates each and is recognized as the world’s first ICU Diploma examination. About the same time, with a group of colleagues, the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society was founded. The Society has just held its 40^th combined medicine and nursing meeting in Auckland.

Dr Parkin’s research is in the general area of biomedical engineering, particularly involving numerical modeling, measurement, clinical decision support and control of physiological processes. There is a particular interest in Guytonian circulatory physiology.

Dr Parkin was the first to describe closed-loop digital control of a patient in Australia, a prelude to the digitally controlled patient of the future.

In retirement, Dr Parkin supervises Monash University under- and postgraduates, is involved in translational research (he has realised FDA-approved devices) and teaches “the odd bit of physiology to anybody who might be interested.”