The Children's Hospital at Westmead

RAHC Camperdown

The hospital was opened in 1880 as the Sydney Hospital for Sick Children after Mrs. Jessie Campbell-Browne, wife of the Member for Singleton, gathered together in 1878 with a group of women to discuss the merits of establishing a children's hospital in Sydney. It soon outgrew the small building in which it was housed at Glebe Point. In 1906, it moved to a much grander building, designed by Harry Kent in Camperdown, where it stayed for 89 years, where it was known as the Camperdown Children's Hospital.[2]

In 1995, the hospital was relocated to its current location in Westmead to better serve the growing populations of Western Sydney. This relocation involved amalgamation with most of the paediatric services of nearby Westmead Hospital (apart from neonates) to form a new hospital with a new name, initially "The New Children's Hospital" and, more recently, "The Children's Hospital at Westmead".

The official name of the Children's Hospital at Westmead, the "Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children", is retained.

The Adolescent Medicine at The Children's Hospital at Westmead seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of young people aged 12–24. The key focus areas include developing information and resources; capacity building to increase workers' skills and confidence in adolescent health; supporting applied research; advocacy and policy development to increase leadership and action for adolescent health.[4]

On February 1, 2023, a team of doctors at Westmead led by Joseph Elkadi, Catherine Chudleigh, and Ann M. Maguire published a controversial article in the paediatric journal Children that purported to examine the developmental pathway and clinical outcomes of 79 transgender children who presented at the hospital's gender service.[5] Despite a broad medical consensus of the world's largest medical associations, the authors concluded that gender-affirming healthcare is, in effect, "iatrogenic" and a "non-standard risky approach". Their conclusions were widely repeated in numerous articles in conservative or right-leaning media outlets in Australia, citing "legal and safety fears"[6][7][8] over gender-affirming healthcare. The press coverage also attracted several thousand highly pejorative public comments about gender-diverse children and adults and their treating physicians.

The conclusions reached in Elkadi's article presenting his Westmead study were subsequently analysed and strongly disputed by the peak body for transgender healthcare in Australia, the Australian New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health (AusPATH).[9] In a response letter dated March 1, 2023, the Westmead study's authors were criticised for "significant bias" in their use of terminology and selection of supporting literature. For example, AusPATH found the Westmead article cited a preponderance of marginal literature that tended to be critical of the gender-affirming approach without any balancing consideration of the "well-described, established" body of work demonstrating the benefits of the more medically accepted treatments. AusPATH also identified a range of methodological flaws and misrepresentations of data in the Westmead study.

AusPATH holds that the Westmead team's use of "discredited literature", in particular its use of the scientifically unverified "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD) classification for study participants, compromises the validity of the research. The ROGD designation is not widely accepted within the field; it is not found in any diagnostic manual. AusPATH found the 'ROGD' term use in the research was supported by citing medical lobby groups such as the National Association of Practicing Psychiatrists (NAPP). The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), the peak body for psychiatry in Australia, does not refer to ROGD in any policy documents, while the Australian Psychological Society (APS) considers that current scientific evidence refutes the concept. The Westmead study's authors were also criticised for using "de-humanising" anti-trans language and for "pathologising" gender diversity in a discriminatory way.[9][6][10]

Several LGBTI human rights groups pointed out that the Westmead group's study runs counter to the NSW Health Strategy for transgender young people and questioned whether Westmead was fit to continue treating transgender children and adolescents in a non-discriminatory and therapeutically beneficial way. In July 2023, the Health Minister for New South Wales, Ryan Park, announced the government would commission a statewide review of gender-affirming care, to be undertaken by the health policy group the Sax Institute. The review was initiated following a "string of staff resignations", which ABC News, Australia said were linked to the disputed research which they characterised as "endorsed by the hospital hierarchy".[11]

In a 2022 incident that was associated by the media with Westmead's approach to gender medical care, Noah O'Brien, a 14-year-old transgender youth, presented to Westmead Children's Hospital with gender dysphoria, seeking care. The hospital refused gender-affirming healthcare, and Noah subsequently died by suicide. The hospital declined to comment on the matter when approached by media organisations.[6]

Some notable individuals connected to the history of the Children's Hospital are:

• Sir Lorimer Dods LVO (1900–1981), paediatrician, who founded, with assistance from Dr John Fulton and Douglas Burrows, the Children's Medical Research Foundation.[12]
• Sir Charles Clubbe (1854–1932), was the President of the hospital's Board of Management from 1904 until 1932, can perhaps be called the father of the Children's Hospital and is sometimes also mentioned as one of the fore-fathers of Australian orthopaedic surgery. Sir Charles Clubbe has a ward named after him.
• Sir Robert Blakeley Wade (1874–1954), orthopaedic surgeon. A new building Wade House was named in his honour in 1939, with pictures of Australian fauna drawn on many walls by artist Pixie O'Harris.
• Dr Margaret Harper (1879–1964), paediatrician, who discovered the difference between coeliac disease and cystic fibrosis of the pancreas in 1930.
• Sir Norman Gregg (1892–1966), ophthalmologist, was the first person to identify German measles as a cause for congenital deformities.
• Dr Lindsay Dey CBE (1886–1973), paediatrician, was the President of the hospital's Board of Management from 1946 until 1959.
• Dr Frank Tidswell (1867–1941), microbiologist, was the Director of Pathology from 1913 until 1941.
• Dr. R. Douglas Reye (1912–1977), fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, after whom Reye's syndrome was named, worked at the hospital from 1939 until his death.
• Dr Marcel Sofer–Schreiber FRACS; MRCS; FRCS 1938; MBBS Sydney, 1931 (1910–1994), paediatric neurosurgeon, led the way in Australia in the treatment of hydrocephalus, using the Spitz–Holter shunt in the 1960s. He went on to train many doctors to carry out this procedure, thus saving the lives of countless babies, and leaving a lasting legacy. He published extensively on his specialty with papers on hydrocephalus, head injuries and spinal tumours. He was also the first surgeon to draw attention to the potentially deadly condition of subdural haematoma in infants.

Some notable individuals connected to the history of the Children's Hospital are:

• Francis Chan (born 1991) – the youngest liver transplant patient in Australia at three months old. He underwent two transplants three days apart as the first transplant failed until the last-minute call came in time for another transplant to save his life.
• Sophie Delezio (born 2001) – treated at the hospital after being badly injured in a car crash at two years old. She suffered burns to 85 per cent of her body but survived and was released from hospital six months later in June 2004.[13]