Camperdown
Neil’s career in paediatric anaesthesia spans decades. As a result he is a link between different hospitals and different times.
Early Days
Training initially at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, he first arrived at Royal Alexandra Hospital, then located in Camperdown, as a registrar in 1984. He was not the first Dr Street to walk through those doors. Neil’s father, Dr Fred Street, was a paediatric surgeon working at the kids’ hospital for decades. Neil’s colleagues continue to be delighted he did not follow in his father’s footsteps too closely.
Having realised paediatric anaesthesia was the greatest of all the many fields of medicine, Neil returned to Camperdown in 1985 for a year as a Fellow. He then spent a year in the UK, training at Great Ormond Street Hospital before returning to a consultant position in inner city Sydney.
“We didn’t have quite the same monitoring then. There were two ECGs for the whole complex. You got an ECG if you had a complex patient. And you used a praecordial stethoscope to listen to the heart and breath sounds and that was continuous cardiorespiratory monitoring as directed by the College. You could have a blood pressure cuff but that wasn’t easy so we kept a finger on the superficial temporal arterial pulse and if it went away you gave some more fluids. It was good in some ways though. It made you look at your patient.”
— Dr Neil Street, AM
The stories of a world of different technology could easily distract from the core feature of Streety’s work as a paediatric anaesthetist – his care for kids and families, and his attention to detail were always on display. And he was part of a department full of great paediatric anaesthetists – the two Johns, Overton and Kenneally. Victor Harrison. Jeanette Thirlwell. David Baines. Michael Cooper. Colleagues that would be part of his future and part of a future for kids across NSW.