Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I'd like to recognise, in this parliament, an outstanding medical professional and doctor on the Central Coast: Dr Colette Hourigan. Dr Hourigan's career has included a number of unique and fulfilling roles across her 42 years of medical service. I asked Dr Hourigan recently to give me some of the highlights of her amazing career. In the following is some insight into that tremendous professional life.

Dr Hourigan grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney and attended local public schools. She graduated from Sydney university and then went on to work at Royal North Shore Hospital, where the first two years of her working life as a doctor corresponded with the New South Wales statewide specialist doctors strike. Dr Hourigan then decided to help solo GPs working in remote areas, undertaking locum work to give them much-needed reprieve. Dr Hourigan tells me that she realised then that general practice isn't just about caring for individual patients; it's about improving the health outcomes of communities as a whole. She then spent 15 years working as a GP in Chatswood and Gosford before deciding to do more training to be a women's health GP and working out of a community women's health centre on the Central Coast.

Dr Hourigan worked for 20 years at the centre. During this time, she established the first GP led clinic to help women suffering from incontinence, ran community education sessions to promote better health in the community, assisted women and children experiencing domestic and sexual violence, trained GPs in women's health and IED insertion techniques, mentored GPs, ran clinics for adolescent girls at Gosford headspace for four years, did pro bono work to help women from different cultures who couldn't access Medicare and volunteered her time on a women's health board and on panels to promote better health services for women.

After all of this incredible work, Dr Hourigan still wanted to do more, so she moved back into mainstream general practice to support and train general practices on how to recognise family and domestic violence in their patients and how to respond to support the family. It became clear to Dr Hourigan after talking to GPs that many victims of family and domestic violence could not access general practice due to coercive control. The only solution was for her to go into three women's and children's refuges on the Central Coast and bring medical care to these marginalised and disadvantaged women and children.

Dr Hourigan volunteered her time to care for these women and children, who were experiencing severe injuries, advanced infections, sleep and behavioural disturbances, speech and developmental delay—in children—and poor mental health. She was able to treat the infections, treat the injuries, arrange counselling, get the children vaccinated and do preventive health checks—but, most of all, support them and give them hope. Dr Hourigan was supported by a nurse and had a very dedicated speech therapist to assess and help the children. This early intervention was invaluable to their engagement in education, and many of the women and children that Dr Hourigan treated were Aboriginal Australians. Dr Hourigan has said that her work during this period was very rewarding and that it meant a great deal to be part of a team that was helping Aboriginal women and children reconnect to country, spirituality and kinship. The strength and resilience of the women and children in the refuges never cease to amaze Dr Hourigan. When I found out about the refuge medical outreach service, I wanted to do everything I could to support that service. The service now has a paid doctor, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and paediatricians working at that refuge. There have also been research papers published on this service's work.

Dr Hourigan also ran an outreach medical clinic for Aboriginal women undergoing drug and alcohol rehabilitation, provided trauma informed care for women with complex mental and physical issues, promoted better management of menopause and other hormone related conditions and worked to improve the outcomes of women experiencing endometriosis who can't afford therapy. Dr Hourigan says that she has been very fortunate to have been trusted by her patients and community and that it has enabled her to address health care inequalities on the Central Coast, but now Dr Hourigan is retiring. I place on the record my immense appreciation of a spectacular career dedicated to helping and supporting patients, particularly women and those in our community who are most vulnerable. Dr Hourigan leaves behind a legacy, and I wish her all the best in her retirement. You'll be greatly missed by the medical community. Thank you, Dr Hourigan.