The faces behind regional clinical trial advancements

Regional clinical trial patient John Robson is on a mission to tell fellow country people that you don’t have to travel to a metro centre to receive the best health care.

At the age of 60, he was given a dire cancer diagnosis and was put on a clinical trial to save his life. Now almost two years later, John’s cancer is under control and he says it’s all thanks to the research and oncology team at Bendigo Health in regional Victoria.

“I have nothing but praise for the entire team. The quality of care was excellent, I can’t fault anything. I live one hour from Bendigo and three hours from Melbourne. Had my only option been to travel to Melbourne to go on a clinical trial, I would’ve said no, and the reality is I would now be dead,” he said.

TrialHub, an Australian-first federal government pilot program, is working with regional Victorian hospitals to support them with what they need, such as workforce upskilling, to provide clinical trials to their community.

It’s so that people, like John, receive the same access to cutting-edge interventions as their metro counterparts.

Tricia Wright, Head of Cancer Services at Latrobe Regional Hospital, Dr Chloe Georgiou, Medical Oncologist and Oncology Trials Fellow at Bendigo Health, and Mardi Cleggett, Clinical Trial Unit Manager at Mildura Base Public Hospital, are among the inspiring women working towards embedding clinical trials in their respective hospitals.

A rising star in the Bendigo region is Dr Georgiou, who was also John’s medical oncologist. She is TrialHub’s first early career fellow and is being mentored by clinical trial experts at Alfred Health.

Bendigo Health has been offering clinical trials for two decades, but there hasn’t been a dedicated clinical trials doctor until now.

“To do a fellowship like this previously, I would’ve had to be based at a big academic hospital that had an oncology service and trials, so this has allowed me to do the work that is usually only available in the city.

“There have been so many advancements in medical oncology, and the only way to do that is through clinical trials. There’s always a need for better and more effective, and less toxic treatments. This is what drives me,” she said.

The Albury–Wodonga native said she’s always been passionate about growing and developing her career in the country.

“A lot of my drive to specialise in oncology comes from watching family members having to travel long distances for cancer care, and knowing that, historically, there hasn’t been great access to clinical trials for regional patients. Being able to develop my skills and bring them back to a regional area is something I always wanted to do, and it’s something Bendigo Health is focused on doing with a hub and spoke model,” she said.

Mildura is a regional town located four and a half hours from Adelaide, and a six-hour drive to Melbourne — a challenging location for any patient wanting to go on a clinical trial.

But that’s all soon to change. Mildura Base Public Hospital will open its first ever clinical trial unit building at the end of this year, with the aim of opening trials for recruitment late next year.

Spearheading this work is Mardi Cleggett, who is thriving in the challenge of starting up a clinical trial unit from the ground up.

Mardi started her career in administration and has a hospital and healthcare career that spans 25 years across middle and senior hospital management in Adelaide, Darwin and Canberra.

Clinical research, she said, is an area she’s always been interested in and jumped at the chance when an opportunity came up to coordinate the STAREE trial on behalf of Monash University in Mildura.

“That was a community-based trial working in with general practices and exposed me to the recruiting and consenting processes, as well as engagement with doctors and patients. It gave me a really good overview of what’s involved in clinical trials,” she said.

From there, she went on to a senior management position at Mildura Base Public Hospital, and with a passion for research and clinical trials well and truly cemented.

“There was nothing, no research, no clinical trials. For those really unwell with cancer in this region, the travel to metro centres is incredibly gruelling. It was very welcomed news earlier in this year that we’d received funding from the Regional Trials Network, and then TrialHub, to help us set up our inaugural trial unit.

This meant a role to create the clinical trial unit was to become available and she knew this was the role her entire career had been leading up to.

“I have a lot of operational experience, and there is still more to learn about clinical trial delivery, but I’m being very well supported and mentored in areas such as governance and policy procedures by the experts from TrialHub, who will be with us for the next five years. I can’t wait to look back in 12 months’ time to see how far we’ve come,” she said.

Dr Tricia Wright was a latecomer to medicine at the age of 40. With two primary-aged children, she took the plunge to study medicine — haematology would end up being her specialty.

“I studied part-time while working as a chef, office manager, research assistant and policy writer. All of these roles gave me an opportunity to observe different careers in health and academia, and I saw that medicine provided the opportunity to have a career that crossed into all sorts of interesting streams such as clinical, research, teaching and administration,” she said.

Starting a career as a doctor with lots of work experience, and being older, has had both benefits and challenges, she said.

“The life experience provides confidence in dealing with the very intimate personal aspects of caring for people who are unwell, and the confidence to navigate through the multitude of tasks that a doctor is expected to learn and perform. However, the career pathway to a specialist clinical and laboratory haematologist is long, around 12 years, and in many ways it’s very competitive,” she said.

Fast-forward to 2018, Dr Wright was appointed as the inaugural Head of Cancer Services role at Latrobe Regional Hospital, which is located in Traralgon, two hours from Melbourne. Under her helm, the cancer unit now comprises a large team of medical oncologists, haematologists and palliative care physicians with advanced trainees in medical oncology. They work across five health services in Victoria’s Gippsland region providing cancer care.

“We have a strong team of senior nurses with medical oncology nurse practitioners, specialist haematology and survivorship nurses. We have developed the first independent medical specialist inpatient unit with a 24/7 on-call program paving the way for more specialists’ units to come with our expanding regional health service. This was a critical foundation in being able to deliver clinical trials and associated clinical research programs,” she said.

Dr Wright sees regional hospitals as a great setting for anyone wanting a fulfilling career.

“It is the best place to create a portfolio career. There is still so much work to be done, you can find your niche, make a difference and have an interesting and rewarding career,” she said.

Image credit: iStockphoto.com/FatCamera