IB Woman
Issue No. 45 - Feb/March 2009
Study in serendipity
by Penelope Herbert
Serendipity has played a large role in the career of Dr Susan Neuhaus, a surgical oncologist, who initially was turned down for nursing school.
A misunderstanding with a tradesman working at Pembroke School, where Susan was a School Prefectchanged the direction of her University application and triggered a curious series of chance happenings.
In her fifth year of medical study, Susan gained a scholarship and cadetship in an industry that has a shortage of medical practitioners – the Australian Army.
After several years as a full-time Army doctor Susan chose to specialise in surgery, which meant transferring to the Army Reserve as the Army has no full-time surgeons.
After choosing laparoscopic surgery as her chosen speciality, fate again played its part when Susan slipped on blood in the operating theatre, rupturing a tendon in her hand. Given that laparoscopic surgery places particular strain on the surgeon’s thumb, Susan was forced to re-think her speciality.
“I had an interest in rare and unusual cancers, soft tissue tumours and melanoma, and received a scholarship to study a Fellowship of Surgery at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, the world’s oldest cancer hospital,” says Susan.
“I was pregnant at the time so it was put off for a year until our daughter, Grace, was 10 months old.
Something similar happened in reverse when I found out I was pregnant with our second daughter, Emma, just before we returned.”
Susan says she didn’t have ‘a career’ until she was nearly 40 because she had spent so much of her life studying.
“Between various roles including Consulting Surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth and Royal Adelaide Hospitals running a private practice and being an Army officer and surgeon, Susan says she sometimes changes ‘hats’ and clothing up to seven times a day!
“I have my surgery clothes depending on the hospital my private practice clothes, my Army uniform and I tend ...
