Rewards in career pick

A LIFESTYLE change that motivated Professor Fiona Judd and her partner to swap Melbourne for Tasmania continues to pay dividends for the state’s health system as much as for the much-loved psychiatrist.

The Royal Hobart Hospital perinatal psychiatrist has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to medicine and medical education, recognition of a decorated career in which she researched the mental health of people with HIV in the 1980s before effective treatment became available, and helped establish the Centre for Women’s Mental Health in Melbourne.

Remarkably, had it been up to her peers, Prof Judd may not have become a psychiatrist at all.

“I remember when I was a junior doctor and it was time to choose what you were going to do, one of the neurologists in our hospital in Victoria said to me: ‘what are you going into?’,” she said.

“I said psychiatry, and he said ‘not by choice I hope’, and I was quite taken aback because it wasn’t seen by some people at least, and by a neurologist, I suppose, as somewhere you would pick to go to.

“But it’s always been my first choice and it’s always been fantastically interesting and fantastically rewarding.”

Prof Judd said she had formed wonderful relationships with colleagues at Royal Hobart Hospital, where she has worked to develop a perinatal mental health service in Tasmania.

She moved to Hobart with partner Julian Davis, a fellow psychiatrist who works with the mental health tribunal, and said she had found many wonderful colleagues at the RHH, including younger counterparts to whom she is a professional mentor.

“It’s not a bad thing for young people to go and work somewhere else and gain broader experience, but coming back (to Tasmania) is really important, and even in the small group that I’ve been involved with, there are a number of younger colleagues who have been interstate and come back,” she said.

“I think they have come back for what is really a fantastic opportunity here, both lifestyle but also professionally.”

Prof Judd has chaired the Tasmanian Psychiatric Training Committee since 2015 and served on the board of Rural Alive and Well after moving to the state.

She said while the community was benefiting from an increased focus on mental health, it had not been matched by an increase in investment across most jurisdictions in Australia.

Prof Judd hopes to share her joy at the honour with an uncle, a retired Anglican bishop and former Dean of Melbourne, James Grant.

“He’s been very important in my life so I’m hoping he is pleased,” she said.