Our late colleague, Denese Playford, valued rural communities and saw them as deserving of the best health care and education. Through her life’s work in teaching, research, coordination, and mentorship, she advanced rural health care delivery across Western Australia and inspired many to do the same.

Denese always spoke of the importance of being intellectually rigorous in academic life, and she committed herself to this path from early on. She completed her first degree – a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology - at the University of Western Australia in 1986, before returning to UWA to complete her PhD in Anatomy and Psychology from 1988 to 1992.

During these years she also completed a Master of Theology through Regent College in Vancouver. She was first appointed to an academic role as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Network Centre of Excellence based at McGill University, remaining there for three years in the mid 1990’s. On return to Australia, she worked briefly at the University of Notre Dame’s Broome campus before joining UWA again in 2002. From then until the time of her death she remained committed to rural medical and health care education in the Faculty of Medicine, first working for General Practice and the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health and then joining the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA) in 2006.

Over her academic career at UWA, Denese progressed steadily from her first appointment as an associate lecturer in 2002, becoming an Associate Professor in 2009 and promoted to Professor in October 2021. During this time, she received many awards for her work, and she especially valued those that related to her teaching or resulted from direct student nomination. In 2012 a Citation for her outstanding contribution to student learning was awarded by the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training. In 2020 she was honoured as a Senior Fellow in the UK-based Higher Education Academy.

Image: Professor Denese Playford.

Her intellect, curiosity and fruitful partnerships resulted in her publishing 61 articles in the peer-reviewed literature. Her first was a study of the optic nerve of frogs in 1993, but she quickly became an author focused on rural health issues and medical education, including work in high impact journals such as BMC Medical Education, BMC Health Services Research, Medical Teacher and Medical Education. She also had papers published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Rural and Remote Medicine and the Australian Health Review. She published across a range of topics such as retention of rural medical workforce, medical student training and the initiatives of the RCSWA. As a result, Denese’s research has been cited 523 times to date by authors from around the world, with her highest citing paper being ‘Impact of the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia on work location of medical graduates’ which was published in The Medical Journal of Australia in 2014. Before she died, she wrote to a fellow academic commenting that her papers focusing on the RCSWA were “really fun to write because it’s a joyful thing to talk about positive outcomes!”

In her work as Unit Coordinator for RCSWA, Denese provided day-to-day leadership for the School’s curriculum design and implementation, assessment and teaching. She was the urban face of the school, contributing to UWA committees and to liaison with the RCSWA’s two partner universities of Notre Dame and Curtin. At the time of her death, she was a current member of 11 committees, and was the chair of four of these. At times discussions in these committees would have been rigorous and heated, but Denese’s approach was to always try and ensure that everyone’s comments were valued. She was a constant voice calling for innovation and excellence in rural medical education, arguing strongly for a bespoke rural generalist-based curriculum; for the deep engagement of students in curriculum redesign; and for assessments that really did measure what rural communities valued and students needed to learn. She argued for education of the heart as well as the mind. She was a special champion for Aboriginal Health education, for equitable delivery of care, and for developing meaningful partnerships between community-based organisations and rural people with the University to improve services and outcomes.

As a colleague and mentor, she changed many people’s lives. One RCSWA staff member called her “our elder”, recognising the contribution she made to the growth of so many others. She supervised student projects, Masters and PhD studies, and was a vigorous contributor to the development of research skills and productivity within the School, especially through the Graduate Certificate in Rural and Remote Health and the Scholarly Activity stream which she designed and delivered for many years. She cajoled some into enrolling in higher studies, encouraged others to collate their activities as a single academic body of work, reinvigorated those that were flagging with their research, and cheered on as people succeeded. She was always confident in her rural colleagues’ abilities, even when they themselves doubted. Her optimism in others got many through times when they wondered if they were up to the job.

Outside her work in WA, Denese was also a respected member of the Federation of Rural Australian Medical Educators, FRAME, where she was described as “one of the most thoughtful, humble and tenacious rural health academics ever encountered”. Her contribution to the changed future of rural health care delivery through her impact on hundreds of students over many years has been recognised by the FRAME leadership team as they too reflect on her life and say goodbye.

Denese’s family were important to her and she valued her roles as sister and aunt. In an online memorial gathering soon after she died, friends and family from around the world told stories of her generosity, her fierceness in the face of perceived injustice, her loyalty to them in all their ups and downs, her love of travel and her openness to all the world had to offer. Her UWA colleagues of close to 15 years have also shared stories of how she rejoiced in their marriages and parties, organised fine dining celebrations, visited after the births of babies and marvelled as the children grew. She also helped them to mourn the losses of dear colleagues and friends.

In recent months, she had been corresponding with a mentor about Greek philosopher Aristotle’s teachings. It seems fitting to conclude now by acknowledging Denese’s death, the sadness of her colleagues, and the grief of those who loved her, with a quote from him that captures Denese’s approach to life and her contribution to our world:

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” ― Aristotle