Clinician Scientist Track (MD-PhD program) – 10 years on

People working in a lab

The UQ Clinician Scientist Track (CST) program is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, we caught up with some of our past MD-PhD students to find out where they are now on their medical journey.

The CST program allows eligible students to incorporate a Higher Degree by Research (HDR), either a PhD or an MPhil (equivalent to a Research Master’s Degree (MSc)) integrated with the MD degree via an intercalated model; meaning students interrupt their MD degree to do full-time PhD or MPhil research, and then return to complete their MD and graduate with an MD-PhD or MD-MPhil.

Dr Casey Linton

Q: What is your current position?

I completed my MBBS/PhD in 2017, with a PhD in neuroscience with the Queensland Brain Institute. I studied mechanisms of nerve regeneration in the laboratory of Professor Massimo Hilliard, using the nematode C. elegans as a model organism. I have since continued clinical work as a doctor, and am currently training as a physician at Cairns Hospital.

Q: What do you want to do in the future?

My work in neuroscience has inspired me to pursue a career as a neurologist in the years ahead.

Q: What brought you to UQ, and how has it helped shape your life?

My time at UQ actually began with the Australian Brain Bee Challenge, a neuroscience competition for high school students. I was very fortunate to win the Queensland Brain Bee in 2008, which led me to continue as a researcher at QBI and complete my studies at UQ. Without a doubt, UQ has shaped my life in unexpected but delightful ways - apart from inspiring my interest in neurology, I also I met my fiancé at UQ when we were both medical students!

Q: How has the Clinician Scientist Track enabled you to contribute to medical discovery?

Working in the Hilliard laboratory, I was part of a team that is characterising a novel means of nerve repair. I am excited to see this work translated to the clinical setting, as it could have a profound impact on how we treat nerve and spinal cord injuries. With the skill set I developed during my PhD, combined with my medical training, I feel well placed to continue research as a neurologist.

Q: What is your greatest gift?

I am incredibly grateful for the time I spent in research at the Queensland Brain Institute. It was a real gift to be a part of such a nurturing research environment.

Q: How have you remained positive during 2020, a challenging year for all Australians?

My fiancé and I had hoped to be married in New Zealand this year, but sadly we have had to postpone our wedding. Staying positive has not been easy, and COVID-19 is not far from the minds of most healthcare workers. For me, enjoying time outside of work has been important. We used our wedding fund to buy a four-wheel drive and went camping around Far North Queensland, an experience I highly recommend!

Q: What gives you the greatest joy?

Currently, I take great joy as a doctor from my interactions with patients. Doctors have the important job of not only diagnosing and managing patients correctly, but also of communicating with them and their families. It is a real artform, and it is so satisfying to see it done well.

Nothing keeps me more focused on the present than my dog, Smokey. Without exception, he greats me with enthusiasm every time I come home from work. It is hard to dwell on the challenges of the day in the face of such relentless affection!

Q. What do you love most about summer/Christmas?

Christmas is one of the rare times that we set aside to relax and regroup. I love to visit my family on the Gold Coast and go surfing on Christmas Day with my Dad. It is a time to reconnect with family and look forward to the year ahead.

Dr Casey Linton

Dr Casey Linton

Dr Casey Linton

Dr Linton with her fiancé and Smokey

Dr Linton with her fiancé and Smokey

Dr Linton with her fiancé and Smokey

Dr Dylan Flaws

Q: What is your current position?

I’m a psychiatry advanced trainee at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. I’m completing an advanced training certificate in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry and working in the older person’s outreach team. My current job involves providing psychiatric care to people aged over 67 years by visiting them in their home, or aged care facility.

Q: What do you want to do in the future?

I’m due to complete my training in February 2021, and I really want to focus on providing psychiatric support to people who’ve survived a severe illness or injury. My ideal career would involve meeting these patients as they arrive in ICU and providing continuity of care as a part of a multidisciplinary team as they step down to the wards, and then following up with them as they resume their lives after discharge.

Q: What brought you to UQ, and how has it helped shape your life?

It’s a little embarrassing, but I chose UQ based on a computer algorithm. I set up a code in excel that calculated my probability of getting into each Australian university available with my GPA, GAMSAT score etc, and UQ had the highest odds.

Q: How has the Clinician Scientist Track enabled you to contribute to medical discovery?

My PhD was on chest pain (I hadn’t decided on psychiatry that early). I tried to develop a decision-support algorithm that would facilitate an accelerated diagnostic protocol for chest pain presentations in emergency. The outcome was the EDACS Score, which identified ~50 per cent of patients could be safely discharged considerably earlier than standard practice. It’s now being used throughout New Zealand, in at least 27 hospitals in USA, and somewhere in Iran. It was also recommended as the preferred process in India.

Since finishing my PhD, I’ve been applying skills developed in other areas of medicine, including looking at delirium, and working with a multidisciplinary team to redesign the ICU environment to improve recovery.

Q: What is your greatest gift?

I think it’s a sincere privilege to be working as a clinician, especially in psychiatry. University may teach you medicine, but it’s your patients who will make you a doctor. In a society that often feels increasingly insular, the clinician-patient relationship allows me to step outside my own social bubble and get to know people on a deep level I would have never met any other way. I’ve interviewed judges and lawyers, murderers and thieves, and people of every ethnicity and belief. People have told me parts of their lives they haven’t even told their children.

Q: How have you remained positive during 2020, a challenging year for all Australians?

When COVID-19 first loomed over Australia, much of my research came to a halt. It was a time where one could easily feel powerless. At the same time, many of my critical care colleagues were also feeling quite distressed and reaching out to their Mental Health colleagues for support. I decided to reapply my resources to set up support for them because if we lose the frontline, we’ll lose the fight. After doing some research and consulting a broad range of stakeholders, and with support from Professor Brett Emmerson and Metro North executives, we managed to set up a psychiatrist-run peer-support hotline for our critical care SMOs which is still running today.

Q: What gives you the greatest joy?

Making things better for people. I remember the first time I saved someone’s life, and it was as a third-year medical student. He was having a heart attack, and they nearly sent him home. Now he’s out there somewhere… still breathing because I had a bad feeling about him and asked to do an ECG “for my own learning”.

Q: What do you love most about summer/Christmas?

I’ve always loved the warmth of summer, and hated frosty mornings in Christchurch and Dunedin. I also love that people endeavour to love their fellow man around Christmas. You really notice it in Psychiatry, because even though it can be a time of sadness for some people, people often present less because family and other organisations are there for them.

Dr Dylan Flaws

Dr Dylan Flaws

Dr Dylan Flaws

Dr Flaws with his wife Jennifer and son Elijah

Dr Flaws with his wife Jennifer and son Elijah

Dr Flaws with his wife Jennifer and son Elijah

Dr Monica Ng

Q: What is your current position?

I’m currently a first-year renal advanced trainee based at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, as well as Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences, Visiting Fellow at the Conjoint Kidney Research Laboratory and lecturer at the UQ School of Clinical Medicine.

In my current clinical role, I’m training in the field of kidney medicine, nephrology, which involves assessing and managing patients with various kidney diseases in clinic and dialysis unit and on the ward. In my non-clinical time, I actively participate in translational research projects. As a lecturer, I tutor medical students via bedside teaching and clinical reasoning sessions.

Q: What do you want to do in the future?

I’d like to subspecialise in glomerular kidney diseases as this fits in well with my previous experience with vascular model design. As a clinical scientist, I look forward to bringing questions/ideas/inspiration from the clinic for exploration in the laboratory and vice versa.

Q: What brought you to UQ, and how has it helped shape your life?

High-quality courses and access to world-class research programs. UQ also had the added benefit of being near my family. The flexibility of courses at UQ has enabled me to pursue interests and develop skills in both clinical and research spheres.

Q: How has the Clinician Scientist Track enabled you to contribute to medical discovery?

The Clinician Scientist Track enabled me to develop skills in clinical and medical research. During my PhD, I found that packed red blood cells stored for longer than 30 days were associated with increased mortality when compared with packed red blood cells stored for less than 10 days in selected populations. I also designed an artificial blood vessel model and used it to study adverse transfusion reactions in the laboratory. These days I’m working towards identifying why people develop glomerular kidney diseases and engineering treatments that prevent progression to end-stage kidney disease.

Q: What is your greatest gift?

My greatest gift is the people around me whom generously provide support and sympathetic ears and laugh at my terrible jokes.

Q: How have you remained positive during 2020, a challenging year for all Australians?

I spend time in-person or virtually with family and friends. Additionally, I focus on things that I am grateful for – great family and friends, supportive colleagues and good health.

Q: What gives you the greatest joy?

Solving problems – be it in clinic when it involves coming up with an individualised treatment plan, in the lab when I’m trying to avoid an explosion, or on the water when I’m preventing my kayak from capsizing in a storm! There is nothing quite like the satisfaction from overcoming a challenge!

Q: What do you love most about summer/Christmas?

The best thing about Christmas in Australia is summer, and the best thing about summer is the opportunity to enjoy lots of water sports such as kayaking and swimming. Queensland is one of the best places for it with so many amazing creeks, swimming holes and beaches!

Dr Monica Ng

Dr Monica Ng

Dr Monica Ng

Dr Ng hiking with her sister

Dr Ng hiking with her sister

Dr Ng hiking with her sister

This story is featured in the Summer 2020 edition of UQmedicine Magazine. View the latest edition here. Or to listen, watch, or read more stories from UQ’s Faculty of Medicine, visit our blog, MayneStream.