Celebrating Kathleen McGrath!
Kathleen McGrath is a paediatric gastroenterologist working in The Department of Gastroenterology and Clinical Nutrition at The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. Having completed most of her training in Victoria, qualifying as both paediatric gastroenterologist and general paediatrician, Kathleen then spent 12 months at Birmingham Children's Hospital in the UK undertaking further subspecialty training in Intestinal Failure and Rehabilitation.
What would you consider to be your main interest area and what is the reason you pursued this clinical area?
My main areas of interest are managing children with intestinal failure, complex nutritional problems, food allergy and inflammatory bowel disease. I find the overlap between these conditions and how they relate to luminal immunology really interesting. In the context of the many advancements in medical management of children with chronic illnesses in recent years, the invaluable role of nutritional focus is sometimes overlooked. I think it is really important to support education, awareness and advocacy for the importance of gut health and nutrition in kids, particularly those with chronic medical conditions.
Out of all the research and publications that you have contributed to, what are you most proud of and why?
In 2024, we published a clinical consensus paper on jejunal tube feeding in children in JPEN with an associated clinical toolkit published soon after on the AuSPEN website. This was a large multidisciplinary project, with authors representing most Australian paediatric centres. As the project lead, I was really proud of the group's work and project's outcomes. It filled an important gap in the literature, providing a clinical tool that can be used to educate clinicians and help standardise care for the growing group of children receiving jejunal tube feeding in Australia. I actually got an email last week to say the JPEN article is amongst the top 10% most downloaded articles in the last 12 months!
As the new deputy chair of the AuSPEN paediatric committee what are you currently working on?
I am enjoying supporting Tanya Collins, the paediatric committee chair and our enthusiastic committee members in their various collaborative projects and endeavours. Specifically, I am co-leading a project looking at vitamin use in children receiving parenteral nutrition in Australia, including a survey of current practices, detailed literature review and development of consensus statements and a clinical toolkit to support clinicians managing children receiving parenteral nutrition, both in hospital and in the community (home PN).