AshColl Alumni Professor Lianne Parkin has come a long way in the years since graduating from Ashburton College in 1979 but has retained a down-to-earth sense of grace and humility throughout.
This certainly shone through during Lianne’s recent Inaugural Professorial Lecture (IPL) at the University of Otago. Lianne gave thanks to her parents, who were both determined that she and her sister would be given every chance to succeed academically. Lianne commented that she was “the first girl on either side of her extended family to be given the opportunity to have more than three years of secondary school education”.
Much of the information in this article was gained through the video of Lianne’s IPL. Lianne was introduced by both Professor Helen Nicolson (Acting Vice Chancellor) and Professor Patricia Priest (Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor, Health Sciences). Trish and Lianne first met at the University of Otago Medical School.
Lianne likened her life and career journey to that of a braided river, with her own river being our own- the Hakatere/Ashburton River, with all the twists and turns that this river takes on its journey to the sea.
In her final year at College, she was given Careers advice that her best bet might be to try teaching, nursing or possibly a bank teller. Fortunately for the world of Medicine, Lianne chose to “ignore that advice” and applied to join the University of Otago’s Medical School. Six years later on graduation, Lianne’s first medical role was as a House Surgeon in the Waikato.
Lianne has tried her hand at many and varied pursuits over the years. She loves tramping, camping, silversmithing, Greek and Roman literature, to name a few. In fact, she was initially torn between Medicine and Classical Studies. She has dabbled in woodwork and even car maintenance, doing a total reconditioning of a 1959 Mini!
University holiday jobs saw Lianne measuring high country river flows, cutting walking tracks through the bush on the West Coast, plus a variety of other jobs.
In 1988 Lianne took on a role in Dunedin as a general House Surgeon where, in subsequent years, she completed a Postgraduate Diploma of Obstetrics and General Practice training. At every break, she continued to take the opportunity to head out into the great outdoors for more tramping and camping.
During one of these breaks, she was unfortunate enough to fall from a horse, resulting in a broken arm and a serious nerve injury. Several months later and still suffering from the after-effects, she made an appointment to chat with Professor Sir David Skegg, an Epidemiology lecturer at the University. Fortunately after nine months, her arm recovered enough to return to clinical work, and she started work in a general practice, at a Family Planning Clinic, and at Student Health in Dunedin.
Lianne backpacked around the UK, Eastern and Western Europe and Russia during 1996 and spent time in Russia where she fully immersed herself in the Russian language.
She completed her PhD in Epidemiology with Professors David Skegg and Charlotte Paul and with the assistance of a Health Research Council Clinical Research Training Fellowship.
Eventually, Lianne became a lecturer in Epidemiology. Research for Lianne’s thesis began in February 1999 when she examined the relationship between the use of different types of combined oral contraceptive pills and fatal pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs). This study was prompted by the unexpectedly high number of deaths from pulmonary embolism in young women taking so-called third-generation oral contraceptive pills. She then completed another two national studies for her PhD – one examined the risk of fatal pulmonary embolism in relation to psychotropic drugs, and the other examined the risk in relation to long-distance air travel. PhD thesis papers aren’t completed in a short span of time – Lianne took several years to complete. Much of Lianne’s PhD research was done using paper records in the absence of today’s technology. One can only imagine the innumerable hours that this laborious way of gaining the necessary information took Lianne and her colleagues.
More recent work has been on the use and safety of drugs used to treat COPD (or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and Type 2 Diabetes. She is currently carrying out research on the use and safety of an anti-nausea drug used in pregnancy and the use of drugs for the cessation of smoking during pregnancy.
Lianne still has a huge passion for her research, which she has most definitely needed over the years, when bureaucracy and red tape must have been a constant source of frustration for her.
We hail Lianne’s wonderful achievement and feel just a little bit proud that she belongs to AshColl Alumni! As has been mentioned many times over the years, Ashburton College continues to ‘punch well above its weight’ when it comes to the achievements of past students.