Clinical Professor Fiona Wood

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Clinical Professor Fiona Woods Story
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• Clinical Professor Fiona Wood is renowned for her
  invention of spray on skin cells for burns
  patients
• She is also the mother of six children
• She and her family live in City Beach

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Fiona aged 6
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• I was born on 2nd February 1958
• I was the third child in our family. I had two
  older brothers and eventually got a younger
  sister
• I grew up in Yorkshire where my parents still
  live
• I went to the local school initially
• My mother worked in a Quaker school and I was
  able to go there as a staff child when I was 13.
  I was there for five years
• It was a pivotal time in my life because I was
  able to achieve more than I if Id stayed in the
  Comprehensive School System that did not go past
  GCE level

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• Numbers were my game from a very early stage. I
  was fascinated by maths and physics
• When I was 16 I was interested in doing maths and
  physics at uni but my brother and my mother
  thought medicine would be better.
• My mother said if youre a doctor you will always
  have a job and be financially independent of the
  male!
• I heard that many times

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• Fiona trained as a doctor at St Thomass Hospital
  Medical School in London
• I always worked because we were means tested and
  on full grants. We had our fees and books paid
  and a living allowance but it was never quite
  enough so we always worked. It was starve
  orwork.
• She married Australian-born Tony Kierath and with
  their two children, migrated to Australia in 1987

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• I was overwhelmed by the sunniness
• Coming from the frozen north when its grey one
  day and grey the next and dark the next day Is
  there a sun???
• Wed arrived in the middle of the night and I
  remember waking my husband up the next morning at
  five oclock and saying, hey wake up, were
  going for a walk and he said why? And I said
  cos the suns shining! And he groaned and said,
  it will be for the next 365 days!

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I am a wife, a mother, a surgeon and scientist

• Fiona insists any success is down to team work
• Fionas greatest challenge hasnt been her
  ground-breaking scientific research, but
  motherhood
• Having your first child is the biggest life
  change. You cant really prepare for that
• Going from five to six isnt such a problem

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• Fiona Wood has two recurring characteristics
• She has genuine humility and a relentless
  positive attitude
• Ive got a lot of energy. My daily routine
  starts at 5a.m. and often I go to bed at
  midnight
• Through her enthusiasm, innovation and vision,
  Fiona has saved and improved countless peoples
  lives
• She is an inspiration

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Left to Right Katrina, Fiona, Gillian and Beth
1993
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Working with burns victims

• Even relatively small burns can be
  extraordinarily devastating from a psychological
  as well as physical point of view
• Burns are devastating
• It is a life-defining point
• You lay in that bed hour after hour in pain
• We try very hard to give the best possible care

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Fiona with a survivor of severe burns and his
wife, 1993
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Peter Hughes, survivor of the Bali bombing says,

• When I woke up, I just couldnt believe it. I
  thought no human being should go through this I
  screamed and cried
• Clinical Professor Wood says we do positive
  things to reduce the time that burn patients have
  to suffer
• We try and get the healing process working as
  soon as possible
• The sooner we can the less trauma and the better
  the recovery

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Spray-on skin cells

• Weve been working on spray-on skin cells since
  the early 90s
• We take a little bit of skin from a normal area
  skin that knows how to regenerate
• It knows how to repair without a scar
• We take the sample of healthy cells and feed them
  for five days in a tissue culture flask
• Then we spray them onto the body and the body is
  then the tissue culture flask

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• Every operation a person has is another bad day
  in the burns unit
• If we can reduce the number of operations we
  reduce the pain and suffering thats associated
  with it and also reduce the scarring
• Speed is very important for scarring

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• Previous techniques of skin culturing required 21
  days
• Fiona and her team have reduced that period to
  five days
• Fiona has found that scarring is greatly reduced
  if replacement skin can be provided within 10
  days
• Fionas holy grail is scarless healing

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Fiona Wood, AMAustralian of the Year 2005

• I am proud to be an Australian and will work
  towards a society dependent on the integrity of
  each other.