Medical student's research a tribute to her sister

AMA Queensland student member Kirby Patterson-Fahy lost her beloved sister to a little-known bacterial lung infection, which inspired her career choices in medicine and research.

Kirby Patterson-Fahy

Fourth-year medical student

Kirby Patterson-Fahy had always planned to be an engineer, not a doctor. It wasn’t until her younger sister became sick, and she spent time with her in hospital, that she realised medicine was far more interesting than she’d first thought.

“When my younger sister got quite sick, I saw how many questions and unknowns there were with her condition, and I became quite interested in medicine. Before that point I had thought of medicine as something that had already been kind of set in stone,” Kirby said.

Being the eldest sister, Kirby was pretty aware of her sister’s treatment, and this caused her to find out as much as she could about nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM).

“When she passed away, I knew that medicine was where I wanted to be,” she said.

“Initially, I was looking more at the treatment side of things, but after she passed, I wanted to know more. Where did she get this infection from? Why did it happen for her? These were the big questions. The doctors had said we'll probably never know the answer to that,” she said.

Kirby said that, as a high school student, her choice to study medicine was less about trying to save lives and more about the intense curiosity regarding the condition.

She learned that NTM could be in tap water, soil, dust and that her sister could have been exposed to the bacterium just about anywhere.

“Everyone's exposed to it every day, and only a certain number of people get sick from it, so that's an interesting research question: why do some people get sick, and some people don't?” she said.

After finishing school and embarking on a Bachelor of Advanced Science, Kirby had to choose a project for her Honours year.

As she read more papers about NTM, she realised one author kept coming up: Professor Rachel Thomson.

“I had been reading more and more about what Rachel and her group had been publishing, so I sent an email to Rachel towards the end of my third year of Uni and said: Any chance that I could do an honours project with you? Because I'm really interested in the area,” she said.

She chose to investigate antibiotic and disinfectant resistance in NTM water isolates.

“I’m really inspired by Rachel. My goal is to become a clinician-scientist, because I’ve seen how Rachel helps patients and their families as well as conducting research. You’re treating patients but working on better ways to treat them at the same time,” she said.

After presenting her work at the American Thoracic Society Conference in Washington and the Colorado Mycobacteria Conference, Kirby is now in her final year of medicine.

She’s now testing to see if new antibiotics work on NTM patient isolates. She continues to work alongside Professor Thomson for the University of Queensland NTM Research Group, who have a long-standing partnership with Gallipoli Medical Research.

Hear more about Kirby’s story on the Voices of Gallipoli Medical Research podcast, available on Spotify or Apple podcasts at https://www.gallipoliresearch.com.au/gmr-voices-podcast/