Joan Refshauge

Joan Refshauge (3 December 1906 – 25 July 1979) was a New Guinea-based Australian medical practitioner, administrator, and schoolteacher.

Education

Refshauge was born in Armadale, Victoria, the eldest of five siblings. One of her brothers was Major General Sir William Dudley Refshauge (1913–2009). She attended University High School, Presbyterian Ladies' College, and the University of Melbourne (BSc, 1928; MSc, 1929; MB/B.S., 1939).^[1] She was a math teacher from 1930 to 1935, after which she became a physician.

New Guinea

Refshauge joined her husband in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in 1947. As a female physician, she was allowed to deal only with maternal and children's issues. After her divorce in 1948, her son joined her there, and she ran the Maternal and Child Health Services. She recruited staff, organised the nurses' training, and oversaw school health-services. During this time she established 21 central clinics, 528 village clinics, and 541 centres visited by mobile patrols in the ANGAU Territory, before her resignation in 1963, when she joined the Queensland Department of Health, and was named deputy-director of maternal and child welfare in 1968. She retired five years later in 1973.^[1]

Personal life

On 19 May 1937, she married Max Bergin, a surveyor with the ANGAU. Their son (her only child), Rupert Bergin, was born in 1942. Max and Joan Bergin divorced in 1948.

Death

Refshauge died on 25 July 1979, aged 72, from undisclosed causes at Auchenflower, Brisbane, Queensland. She was survived by her son, Rupert Bergin.

Honors and awards

Publications

C. Bell (editor), The Diseases and Health Services of Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby, 1973)
L. M. Hellstedt (editor), Women Physicians of the World (Washington, 1978)
E. Kettle, That They Might Live (privately published, Sydney, 1979)
J. Byford, Dealing with Death, Beginning with Birth: Women's Health and Childbirth on Misima Island, Papua New Guinea (Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 1999)

References

1 2 ADB Online biography of Dr Joan Refshauge

External links

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