Research Grants
CURRENT RESEARCH GRANT HOLDERS
Three grants have been issued this year to medical students / trainees / registrars. Please find details below of the grant recipients and how they are utilising their grant:
Sam Khadra
It was during the first week of my medical school at the University of Sydney that we were given a talk on the importance of research in medicine by Dr Jonathan Hong and encouraged to get ourselves involved. Dr Hong left a link to Professor Paul Bannon’s email on the lecture slides and I decided to send him an email outlining my interest. I began working as a research assistant in the Cardiothoracic Department at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and have been fortunate enough to be awarded a grant from The Baird Institute to complete the project outlined below.
In conjunction with The Baird Institute and Strathfield Private hospital, I am commencing work on a project to integrate peri-operative data on cardiothoracic surgery performed at Strathfield private with the Central Sydney database. The intention is to have a centralised database of operative outcomes which will be the backbone of productive research going forwards. The cardiothoracic data at Strathfield Private stretches back to the hospital’s conception and captures a history of innovative procedures from minimally invasive surgery, robotic surgery and trans-cutaneous aortic valve replacements (TAVI). Hosting this data on the central Sydney database will allow broad accessibility and ensure it can be utilised in valuable cardiothoracic research in the future.
Although I am at an early stage of my long journey through the medical profession, I am motivated by pursuing a career that balances research, education and clinical work. I am lucky to be able to work closely with a mentor like Professor Paul Bannon who embodies the characteristics of clinical excellence, services to the broader community and contribution to education that I will strive to emulate in my own career. It is a great privilege to have this opportunity, and I am immensely grateful to both The Baird Institute and Professor Paul Bannon for trusting me with this role and providing a generous grant to facilitate the completion of the project.
Nicholas McNamara
I am a cardiothoracic registrar at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. I graduated from Sydney University with a Bachelor in Physiotherapy in 2012 and graduated in Medicine in 2016. For the past three years I have been working at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital pursuing a career in cardiothoracic surgery and am currently completing my Master of Surgery (Cardiothoracic Surgery). I am very grateful to have recently received a grant from The Baird Institute for my work with A/Prof Christopher Cao on the thoracic surgery database.
The thoracic surgery database at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital was designed to capture operative information and outcomes to guide the delivery of optimal surgical care. It is currently undergoing an evolution as we begin to include more data pertaining to longer term outcomes. Recently, we reviewed our thoracic database and found it to be lacking in useful information relating to patients’ long-term pain and postoperative function. As these are undoubtedly two very important outcomes, we have worked to expand the database to capture this information. We will be using this new information to better determine which operative and anaesthetic practices lead to improved pain and function so that we can ensure the best possible outcomes for all our patients.
Charis Tan
I am a cardiothoracic registrar at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. I graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (Hons) and was a recipient of the Ellice Jane Hammond Prize for excellence in student internship. I am a director of Airborne Aid, an international non-profit organisation based in Australia, connecting medical aid with destinations in need through free luggage space. I have presented at international conferences and published in international peer-reviewed journals. In 2019 I was very happy to receive a research grant from The Baird Institute pertaining to the upkeep and integrity of data entry into the ANZSCTS Cardiac database. I have also received a Baird Institute educational scholarship to complete a Masters of Philosophy (Surgery). My theseis is entitled “Optimising Medical and Surgical Treatments of Isolated Tricuspid Regurgitation”.
My research is to retrospectively characterize patients with isolated primary severe Tricuspid Regurgitation, who were identified or referred late (symptomatic right heart failure or right ventricular dysfunction for less than 12 months) and to fully understand the impact of our current management strategy on clinical outcomes with the aim being to improve the existing strategy.
