Associate Professor Louis Irving

Name: Associate Professor Louis Irving

Career stage: Consultant

Location: Melbourne

Position: Physiology lecturer University of Melbourne, Faculty of Medicine

Medical Specialty: Respiratory and Sleep Medicine

What do you enjoy most about your specialty?

I enjoy the patient contact, combining physiology and clinical practice, combining psychological medicine with clinical practice and the variety.

Respiratory medicine is varied because there is acute and chronic medicine ranging from work in a respiratory care unit to pulmonary rehabilitation.

There are crosses in age groups from asthma in childhood to asthma and pneumonia in adults to lung cancer and obstructive airways disease in the elderly.

It ranges from exercise induced asthma in elite athletes to occupational medicine such as mesothelioma and penumoconiosis from asbestos exposure.

It includes diving and altitude physiology, sleep medicine and the practical skill of interventional bronchoscopy.

What are the challenges of respiratory medicine?

Finding the balance between clinical practice, teaching and research. Leading clinical and research teams is a challenge because of time and resource restraints.To identify and facilitate research collaborations between clinicians and basic researchers is demanding.

What are some of the things that helped you decide on a training program?

By chance.

I qualified as a physician and a training program was available in respiratory medicine so I chose it by chance. it had the elements I liked of combining physiology with clinical practice. It was scientifically oriented.

Do you have any advice for young aspiring respiratory physicians?

Base your practice on an understanding of physiology and psychological medicine, as respiratory symptoms often have a psychological background.

»Visit the Respiratory and Sleep Medicine specialty page