Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital
Suite 1
3 Doherty Street
Birtinya, Qld, 4575
(07) 53906360
(07) 53906222
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Dr Hale joined the Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital as a general medicine and infectious diseases physician in 2015. She is a member of the hospital’s infection control committee and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Sunshine Coast University.
Dr Hale gained her medical degree at Monash University (Hon) and after four years of hospital residency, emergency department and family practice rotations, embarked on her specialist training at the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg Melbourne. Her advanced training in infectious diseases included ID and microbiology training at the Alfred (VIC), John Hunter (NSW), and Royal North Shore hospitals (NSW). After four years of advanced training, Dr Hale worked as an infectious diseases consultant in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. Returning to general medicine, she then completed a 2-year research fellowship at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, publishing two clinical trials on the cardiovascular and endometrial effects of plant and soy isoflavones (with professors Claude L Hughes and Noel C Bairey Merz).
In 2001, Dr Hale returned to Australia to embark on her PhD at the University of Sydney with Professor Ian Fraser. Continuing on from her studies in Los Angeles, she studied the hormonal dynamics underlying the midlife and menopause transition. As a result, she published several papers and her observations have made an important contribution to the understanding of menopausal health.
During her PhD and for several years after, Dr Hale was the primary specialist physician at the Port Hedland hospital in remote WA, gaining valuable experience in general medicine, community acquired and chronic infections, type II diabetes, heart failure, alcoholic liver disease and indigenous health/disease. In 2011, she finally left WA and moved to the sunshine coast and resumed both general medicine and infectious diseases. Over the next 4-5 years, she also studied ‘systems-biology’ approach to diagnosis (with the Institute of Functional Medicine in the USA) and became a certified practitioner in Functional Medicine in 2016.
Dr Hale’s functional medicine approach involves undertaking a meticulous patient assessment which she considers to be in alignment with the principles of her physician training. It also enables her to keep learning new information and new tools to diagnose, manage and prevent disease while striving to minimise harm.