An Australian doctor on Hadassah’s frontline

Hadassah Australia, together with the Perth Jewish Doctors Group and Dianella Shule, recently held the event “Healing Lives in Extraordinary Times”, featuring Professor Vernon van Heerden, one of the most prominent intensive care physicians at the Hadassah Medical Organisation and in Israel more broadly.

Van Heerden is well known in Perth, having worked at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital as an intensive care physician and served as president of the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand.

Since making aliyah in 2012, van Heerden has built an exceptional career at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. He is now a senior intensivist and anaesthetist at Hadassah Mount Scopus, having previously served as head of the General Intensive Care Department at Hadassah Ein Kerem. He also holds a full professorship in anaesthesiology and critical care at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Speaking to The AJN, van Heerden described the challenges of managing Hadassah’s intensive care unit during wartime, when resources are placed under severe strain.

“What it means is having to suddenly arrange to receive injured patients to an already full intensive care unit, with little warning. Less acute patients are transferred out to make room for the new patients. All of this has reinforced my appreciation of the work we do in intensive care, caring for the sickest and most vulnerable patients in the most difficult circumstances, often without the recognition that our surgical colleagues receive.