Eleven months into his medical internship Dr Vishavjit Gill has been named junior researcher of the year at the prestigious Mackay HHS Excellence in Leadership, Training and Research Awards.
To top it off the rising star took out the MIRI Poster for Research prize, alongside kidney specialist Dr Danielle Wu, for their clinical audit into acute kidney injury (AKI) in Mackay Base Hospital patients going in for surgery. AKI is sudden kidney failure or kidney damage and is a common complication in surgical patients.
Dr Gill was nominated by a colleague for his great motivation and skills to collaborate with different areas across the Mackay Base Hospital to finish the clinical audit within a year and will be presenting his research findings in an international renal conference, World Congress of Nephrology in February 2022.
“I was really grateful to even be nominated for an award as an intern,” he said.
“Research is a way for me to learn which then allows me to provide better patient care. Given that I can do this work at Mackay Base Hospital and people are so supportive, it is good for me to take advantage of that.”
The idea for the clinical audit that gained him recognition started in February when Dr Gill was doing his first rotation in the Mackay Base Hospital anaesthetics department.
“The audit initially started off with asking the question what are the risks in giving ibuprofen to surgical patients? Ibuprofen is regularly prescribed for pain relief and we were noticing there were clusters of patients within the surgical department with AKIs. Most of them had been given ibuprofen.
“From there we looked at other common factors in the patients such as whether they had a history of diabetes, kidney disease or other kidney problems.
“We found the prescription of pain relief, such as ibuprofen/other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, in these particular patients with comorbidities puts them at a higher risk of developing AKI.”
Dr Gill plans to work on a framework that will guide health workers on how to identify surgical patients at higher risk of developing an acute kidney injury and what they can do to prevent it.
Thank you to major sponsors NQRTH who helped make the event possible.
