2025 Tas Senior Australian of the Year Associate Professor Penelope Blomfield

Australian Community Media

Meet Your Australians - 2025 Tas Senior Australian of the Year Associate Professor Penelope Blomfield. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.

Transcript

00:00So, I never thought of myself as a trailblazer. I think I was the third or fourth woman to

00:07be trained as a gynae-oncologist. Hence, it was likely that I would be the first Tasmanian

00:14female gynae-oncologist since we're a relatively rare breed. I was appointed to re-establish

00:22the gynae-oncology service for women with gynaecological cancers. Early on in Tasmania,

00:28I was pleased to collaborate with a group from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

00:35And in fact, this is one of the pivotal studies that showed that a significant percentage

00:40of women with certain types, the common type, of ovarian cancer actually carry genetic mutations.

00:47The exciting thing is that because they have these genetic mutations, there are now targeted

00:53treatments that significantly lengthen the lives of women and possibly cure women who

01:01otherwise would have eventually succumbed from their ovarian cancers. I'm passionate

01:07about women with gynaecological cancer getting prompt and best care, irrespective of where

01:15they live. I established a training programme for gynaecologists who wanted to advance their

01:25surgical skills. We particularly chose people who wanted to work in remote or rural areas.

01:33So actually one of the things I'm very proud of was bringing nurses into the service. Women

01:42with gynaecological cancer often have to undergo quite rigorous and lengthy treatments

01:49and that can be very challenging for them. But there's often other aspects of their lives

01:54that are impacted upon and this can be the loss of their fertility or the loss of their

02:00ovarian function. This can obviously impact widely on their self-worth and also on their

02:07relationships. Because of this I realised that women needed broader support. I think I can

02:16claim to being one of the first clinicians to approach the Tasmanian government and ask for

02:22a cancer nurse to work alongside me. So if you ask me what my ultimate goal is, then it's probably

02:30to continue to encourage research for improving outcomes for women with gynaecological cancers.

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