Reflecting on a career spanning more than 40 years in nursing and midwifery, Burnet Institute Research Nurse, Kate Allardice smiles. “I am forever thankful that’s what I chose to do with my life,” she says.
It’s a hugely varied professional journey that spans the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre in the days when female nurses (but not doctors) were banned by management from attending to male patients, to coordinating staff at a major Brisbane hospital, to working in Aboriginal health in Central Australia, to key roles on research projects on the HPV vaccine and BRCA breast cancer gene.
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For the past four years, Ms Allardice worked primarily on Burnet’s TAP (Treatment as Prevention) Study, investigating the efficacy of a nurse-led model of care to test, treat and cure people infected with hepatitis C using new highly effective medications.
“The study dealt specifically with people who inject drugs, and my colleagues and I would go out to various locations in Melbourne that were hot spots for drug activity and where people from lower socio-economic groups were living or congregating,” she said.
“Disadvantaged groups tend to be shy of the medical profession, and people who inject drugs are stigmatised, so you have to form relationships and you have to be trusted for people to want to engage with you.