This is a very abbreviated description of some of my professional roles..

Hi, my name is David Thorne, a now retired medical doctor and educator of medical students.

I graduated from The University of Adelaide in 1973 and completed my internship at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I then worked at Southport General Hospital on the Gold Coast where I undertook some additional training in anaesthetics.

I initially worked as a GP-Anaesthetist in Southport and subsequently as a solo GP in South Australia, before pursuing my special interest in Hospice Care.

I became the inaugural Medical Director of the 14-bed Hospice within Philip Kennedy Centre at Largs Bay, South Australia and subsequently Director of Palliative Care at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and Lyell McEwin Hospital.

In 1986 I was privileged to visit Montreal and work briefly with the then leading palliative care expert outside of Britain, Prof. Balfour Mount.

In the early days of “Western Palliative Care Service” I collaborated with Clinical Nurse Manager Marg Venning to establish an innovative community palliative care programme serving Adelaide’s western suburbs. This program grew to provide a hospital-based community outreach (home visiting) service offering expert symptom management and/or end-of-life care for up to 1000 patients each year.

In 1999 I moved to take up another inaugural position, a 5-year appointment as the first Medical Director of the newly built 20-bed Murdoch Community Hospice in Perth.

I subsequently fulfilled a number of palliative medicine consultancy and teaching roles, undertook community visits in the WA Country Health Services south-west region, and initiated a regular palliative care consultancy at Bunbury St John of God and Public Hospitals.

From 2008 to 2015 I shared the role of palliative medicine consultant to the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women, working primarily in the Gynaecologic Oncology Department. I also took on the role of visiting palliative medicine consultant to Rockingham General Hospital.

In the last 11 years of clinical practice, I was appointed Associate Professor in Palliative Medicine at The University of WA, University of Notre Dame Australia (Fremantle) and Edith Cowan University. For a time, I found myself teaching all the medical students coming through the two (at that time) medical schools in WA.

Over several years I progressively relinquished my diverse responsibilities to trusted colleagues (thank you all !) and allowed my medical registration to finally lapse at the end of 2016!

Since my ‘full-time retirement’ the drive to continue imparting my knowledge and experience has fuelled an unofficial role in public speaking, mostly on health-related matters in a variety of different organisations and settings….

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1986

1999

Students, registrars & colleagues always afforded me the greatest respect!