BIODATA ON MY RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS (written in 3rd person):
Paul Kitchen has had considerable experience in the area of Breast Surgery. He helped set up the Breast Clinics at the Royal Melbourne hospital in the 1970’s, and at the Queen Victoria Medical Centre, Melbourne, in the early 1980’s and from 1986 at St.Vincents Hospital, Fitzroy, where he instituted a database for all new patients that has since provided a unique and large dataset for research. He was a foundational member of both the Adjuvant Trials Subcommittee and Breast Study Committee of the Victorian Cooperative Oncology Group, Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria, that initiated collaborative clinical trials involving other major hospitals in Melbourne and around the world. He has been the St.Vincent’s Hospital representative on the Cancer Council of Victoria for the past 14 years. As one of the first surgeons at the St Vincent’s BreastScreen program, he has written several papers and given numerous presentations relating to clinical research on the extensive clinical data now accruing at that centre. His major research interests in the field of breast cancer have been hormone receptors, biological prognostic markers, small invasive breast cancers, axillary dissection and ductal carcinoma-in-situ of the breast, tubular carcinoma and extensive-in-situ component. With a colleague at St.Vincents Hospital, he has coordinated and chaired Breast Update Conferences for surgeons in Victoria every two years since 1987.
He has a major interest in teaching medical students and postgraduate surgical trainees, and in 2003 obtained his Master of Arts with a thesis on ‘Experiential Learning and Reflective Practice in Medicine and Ministry’ under the Melbourne College of Divinity (an affiliate of the University of Melbourne). This thesis examined the positive and negative aspects of the new problem-based medical undergraduate curriculum and compared it to new ways of teaching theological students preparing for Christian ministry in Australia.
Paul is a national and international reputation in the surgery of Pilonidal Sinus and has visited world-renowned surgeons in Europe and United States of America to develop his skills and knowledge in this area. He now has a busy practice with referrals not only of patients with breast disease, but of difficult cases of recurrent pilonidal disease.
