BEAUTY side of the practice while he looked after the rehabilitation. “He showed me a good time. We ate mud crab and he showed me what the hinterland was about and that is what really sold me. I could see myself coming back here, a place like my childhood and giving our kids the same sort of thing.” It was also around this time that de Jager started expanding into the research side of rheumatology. He had started research while working closely with clinical pharmacology into the therapeutics for rheumatoid arthritis during his time at St Vincent’s Hospital. When he moved to the Gold Coast, de Jager’s practice was picked from a number of sites for another study where he ended up in the writer’s group, which resulted in a paper that has now been cited 1780 times. It was the beginning of a research career that would see de Jager listed as the author on more publications than the number of years he had been practicing. It was also the start of a career that would see the consultant rheumatologist have a voice in the profession. “That study was the main reason the government approved anti-TNF therapy. We ended up going down the Canberra to lobby the Health Minister. This would cost $100 million so we met with the head of the finance committee, who happened to be a doctor, and he listened to our presentation and he bought it.” In 1995, de Jager became a Senior Visiting Rheumatologist which was a position applied to and granted by the Health Minister. By then, he was Chair of the Royal Australian College of Physicians in Queensland, had been President of the Australian Medical Association on the Gold Coast and was Chair of the Committee of Queensland Medical Colleges. During his career, de Jager has held many distinguished roles in associations and learned societies but says his biggest achievement was being elected president of the Australian Rheumatology Association in 2001. “We managed to get arthritis recognised as the sixth national health priority and I chaired the rheumatoid arthritis section of that. We managed to get agreement through the whole country on the treatment of early rheumatoid arthritis. To get anything through on the national health priority list is unbelievable; it took five years.” De Jager would go on to be president a second time in 2013. His contribution to the association was officially recognised in 2007 when he was awarded the Distinguished Service Gold Medal of the Australian Rheumatology Association. It was not only on a national scale that de Jager was making waves. Closer to home, the doctor who has been described as a “loud” advocate for the profession by colleges, along with his good friend Dr David Lindsay, played an integral part in the threat of doctors to resign en masse in the late 1980s. This was during a time of health crisis and the aim was to encourage the Health Minister, Leisha Harvey, to make some dramatic changes in public health care facilities on the Gold Coast. However, this professional achievement did come at a cost. “My work has impacted my personal life a lot especially during the years of the political scenes. I would often have "We managed to get arthritis recognised as the sixth national health priority and I chaired the rheumatoid arthritis section of that." 62 Pindara Magazine 2016
Pindara Private Hospital Magazine - Issue Nine
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