Patty Correll

In 1995 I returned from a two year working holiday in England. It felt like time for a change after several years nursing in cardiothoracic intensive care, so I took a job for one semester at the University of Technology working with student nurses. It was there that one of the nursing lecturers told me about the MPH she was doing at UNSW. She put me in touch with the course coordinator. The UNSW Centre for Public Health's links with the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) especially interested me as I thought HIV was a very important area. This was probably the main reason I chose UNSW.

I decided to do the MPH full time, and really enjoyed being a student again. I found the whole focus of public health a complete turn around from my previous thinking on health and this was very stimulating. To my surprise, I did very well in statistics and epidemiology. I was searching for a topic for my major project and decided to approach my epidemiology lecturer, John Kaldor, to see if he had any opportunities for a project related to his work at NCHECR . This ended up leading to a position as a research assistant at NCHECR.

It was in doing my major project that I applied what I had learnt in the coursework and this was the most satisfying part of the MPH for me. I have continued at NCHECR until the present, and the experience I have gained in research and epidemiology has been very rewarding. Last semester I tutored in epidemiology for the MPH and I am now considering topics for a PhD.