Dr Dinesh Palipana. Photo supplied
Dinesh Palipana OAM is a doctor. And a lawyer. And a scientist. And an academic. And an advocate. And a published author. And the 2021 Queensland Australian of the Year. And he wouldn’t be where he is without nurses.
‘I had a car accident about 15 years ago,’ Dinesh says. ‘And one of the things that became apparent to me after that accident – and now working in the emergency department – is the urgency of time and the shortness of life. It’s made me want to do as much as I can, so I try to seize every moment.’
That car accident caused a spinal-cord injury that left Dinesh with quadriplegia. Suddenly, he was no longer a medical student, he was a patient. During the several months he spent in hospital, many people told him to forget his dream of becoming a doctor. But he was lucky, he says, to have ‘really passionate people who took risks’ to help him.
‘And one of the reasons why I’m so excited to speak at the ANMF Australian Nurses and Midwives Conference,’ he adds, ‘is because a big part of that journey has been nurses.’
While others doubted, it was an ICU nurse who spent hours with Dinesh trying to figure out how he could cannulate without the use of his fingers. While others said try something else, a midwife took Dinesh under her wing during his obstetrics placement and empowered him with the opportunity to learn.
‘There have been amazing nurses and midwives in my career who have helped me do things, and others who have helped me troubleshoot barriers,’ he says. This help, he explains, made him realise that most of these barriers are in our own minds. ‘It is society putting up barriers, rather than what’s happened to me. Given the chance and having the willingness to attempt things, it’s even surprised me how far we’ve been able to come.’
And Dinesh has plans to go even further. His work as a scientist – which has attracted several million dollars in grant funding – is looking at electrical stimulation and thought control to restore function in people with paralysis. And with several ‘exciting’ advances in science over the years, Dinesh is hopeful that one day he and others like him will be able to stand up again. ‘That’s what we’re working towards.’
Help one person, change the world
In the meantime, Dinesh spends his days helping his patients get back up again through his work as an emergency physician at Gold Coast University Hospital.
‘I love going to work,’ he says. ‘I love the opportunity to be there for someone and to make a difference in their life. But I hated being a patient. It’s so disempowering and scary. I remember how difficult it was, and that definitely informs the way I practice medicine today.’
Inspired by his time as a patient and by the good people – including nurses and midwives – who advocated for him, Dinesh will be speaking at the ANMF Australian Nurses and Midwives Conference on the topic of advocating for those with disabilities and being a voice for good.
‘Going through spinal cord injury and coming to understand disability at the age of 25,’ he explains, ‘one of the things that made the biggest differences to me was having good people to advocate for me to get back to medical school, to start work as a doctor.’
Those good people are abundant in healthcare, and by choosing healthcare as a profession we have been given not just an opportunity to do good, but a platform, Dinesh believes. ‘Society has afforded us the credibility to be a voice,’ he says, ‘and people listen.
‘Yes, our primary job is to deliver good health,’ he continues. ‘But there are a lot of things that interact with the good health of our community: poverty, the environment, natural disasters, housing, transport. We need to be a voice for those things too, if we’re really going to be health advocates.’
If that all feels overwhelming, it’s important not to underestimate the power of helping just one person, Dinesh concludes.
‘My mum says that helping one person might not change the world but it will change the world for them. But I think that you actually do change the world by helping one person. I think that’s what these people [who have helped me] have done, and it’s what my colleagues – the incredible, amazing nurses that I work with – do every day. So take a shot on one person at a time. And when the hard time comes, stand up for what’s right and what’s good.’
