Dr Georgina Hale (Infectious Disease Specialist)
- Name
- Dr Georgina Elaine Hale
- Occupation
- Infectious Disease Specialist
- Gender
- Female
- Medical Specialties
- General Medicine
- Infectious Disease Medicine
Dr Hale joined The Sunshine Coast Private Hospital as a general medicine and infectious diseases physician in 2015 and has private consulting rooms nearby in Pheasant Street. She is a member of the hospital’s infection control committee and the antibiotic stewardship team. She is also working at the Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital (while the hospital has a public hospital contract) as a general medical physician and Infectious diseases consultant. Her interest areas are general medicine, infections, menopausal health and functional medicine (Institute of Functional Medicine – USA)
Dr Hale gained her medical degree at Monash University (Hon) and after four years of hospital residency, emergency department and family practice rotations, embarked on her specialist training at the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg Melbourne. After three years of basic training, she worked for four years as an advanced trainee in infectious diseases and microbiology at the Alfred (VIC), John Hunter (NSW), and Royal North Shore hospitals (NSW). Following this, Dr Hale worked as an infectious diseases consultant in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. During this time, she was also training hard to achieve her long term goal of representing Australia in track and field (400m and 400m hurdles). In 1998, this goal led her to Los Angeles where her track coach lived (Leo Davis). While there, she secured a research fellowship at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and over a two-year period, completed and published two clinical trials on the cardiovascular and endometrial effects of plant and soy isoflavones (with professors Claude L Hughes and Noel C Bairey Merz). In 2001, following an unsuccessful bid to participate in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Dr Hale returned to Australia to embark on her PhD at the University of Sydney with Professor Ian Fraser. Following on from her studies in Los Angeles, she decided to investigate the hormonal dynamics underlying the midlife and menopause transition. As a result, she published several papers and her observations have made an important contribution to the understanding of menopausal health.
During her PhD and for several years after, Dr Hale was the primary specialist physician at the Port Hedland hospital in remote WA, gaining valuable experience in general medicine, community acquired and chronic infections, type II diabetes, heart failure, alcoholic liver disease and indigenous health and disease. In 2011 Dr Hale left WA and moved to the sunshine coast. Since resuming general medicine and infectious diseases consulting in the sunshine coast, she has become increasingly interested in the new research relating to the underlying causes of disease and the ways in which we can halt or reverse the disease process using nutrition, lifestyle modification and specific supplements. She chose the Institute of Functional Medicine (based in the USA) to learn most of this new information and says of this new knowledge, “there is truly fantastic work being done around the globe, and the new information will very soon change the face of medicine. I can see us being able to prescribe very effective programs (eating, lifestyle, supplements and medicines) to prevent, reverse and manage diseases”. Dr Hale became certified in Functional Medicine in April 2016 and says, “the Functional Medicine approach requires a much more meticulous patient assessment that I am used to however the foundational systems biology approach leave few stones unturned as to the direction to head to find a solution for health problems whether it be curative or an effective management strategy that will increase rather than decrease overall health. The problem with our largely pharmaceutical approach is that we often cause more health problems down the track and we rarely restore overall good health to the individual. We as doctors are not yet taught enough about the possible underlying causes of the problems and the effective strategies for prevention”.
Dr Hale says, “a functional medicine assessment does take time, and the patient needs to be committed to a renewed way of eating and living – with nutritional supplements and/or drug therapies being used only on a back drop of optimal eating and living”. Dr Hale is particularly interested in what the functional medicine approach can do for midlife and menopausal health issues, insulin resistance and associated disorders (fatty liver), resistant obesity, the metabolic syndrome, fatigue states, IBS and reversing early neurocognitive decline (dementia) according to the Bredesen Protocol (Dale Bredesen USA). When Dr Hale opened the ‘Hale Clinic’, she wanted to pay tribute to her late parents, Betty and George Hale. She says of her parents, “they provided a critically important foundation for me in order to develop the wherewithal to study so widely and to continue to question so deeply about everything I learned. They were both an enormous inspiration and I am immensely grateful for everything they taught me, gave me and continue to inspire in me. So I dedicate this clinic to them.”
- Hospital Affiliations
- Buderim Private Hospital
- Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital
Practice Locations
Sunshine Coast
- Sunshine Coast University Private Hospital
- Address
- Suite 1, 3 Doherty Street
Birtinya QLD 4575
Australia
- Phone
- 07 5390 6360
- Fax
- 07 5390 6222
