Professor Richard Turner

As a surgeon, Professor Richard Turner says he’s always been interested in the “bigger picture” of medicine.

This includes a strong commitment to improving the patient journey, and “straddling the divide” between hospital and community.

Professor Turner graduated with an MBBS from the University of Queensland in 1985. He then trained at the Royal Brisbane Hospital to obtain a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in General Surgery in 1995.

Following some post-Fellowship training overseas in the UK and France, he then worked at the Cairns Base Hospital and qualified with a PhD from James Cook University.

In 2009 he came to Tasmania as a Professor of Surgery with UTAS. Largely based in Hobart, he also consults monthly at the Launceston General Hospital.

In 2022 he was awarded a Clifford Craig Foundation medical research grant to explore the epidemiology and health economic implications of pancreatitis at a state or regional level.  

With the goal of establishing a comprehensive picture of disease burden, Professor Turner says he credits his passion for research with an interaction from early in his medical journey.

“Early in my career, I attended a lecture by a visiting professor, who said that if you wanted to become a recognised authority on something, you should choose a disease that is neglected, unattractive and unloved,” he said.

“Thus my principal interests in anal neoplasia and pancreatitis – for which I have a modest passion.”

 Other collaborative projects Professor Turner is currently working on include:

• Designs for a Better Patient Journey: Using stochastic modelling to facilitate decision-making for bed allocation and to improve patient flow in hospitals

• Evaluation of an Integrated Care Model for Older Acute Surgical Patients

• Ongoing High Resolution Anoscopy surveillance of a cohort of patients with anal squamous intra-epithelial neoplasia