It is with great sadness that the RBWH Foundation announces the passing of an Australian medical trailblazer and Queensland burns management pioneer, Professor Stuart Pegg.
In 2022, Professor Pegg was named a Queensland Great by the State Government for his achievements in developing and providing life-saving treatment for critically ill burns patients.The annual awards recognise individuals and organisations that have made significant contributions to the history and development of Queensland.
The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) Burns Unit, named in Professor Pegg’s honour, has one of the best survival rates in the world, thanks to his legacy. These days, the Unit is the major referral centre for Queensland, Northern NSW, Northern Territory and the Pacific Islands. It provides life-saving treatment for critically ill burns patients with expertise from world-class facilities and medical professionals.
Professor Pegg saw his first burns victim in the late 1950s in outback Queensland. Later, when he was appointed Surgical Supervisor at RBWH in 1967, he was told that he would be treating burns patients as no other surgeon was interested.
With no one to train him in burns care and with little known about how to treat patients, Professor Pegg read everything he could find before being granted a Churchill Fellowship to visit the world’s leading burns centres in the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA - bringing back his learnings to Queensland.
As Surgical Supervisor, in a time when women were actively discouraged from entering the surgical field, Professor Pegg fostered equal opportunity allocations for female resident doctors in surgical specialties to ensure they could compete with their male counterparts for both registrar and consultant posts.
This paved the way for many women who may never have otherwise had the opportunity to train, including the first plastic surgeon to be trained in Australia, Dr Vedeall Hinckley. Dr Hinckley went on to develop reconstructive surgery at RBWH’s Head and Neck Cancer Clinic under the mentorship of Professor Pegg.
Due to his dedication, Professor Pegg developed new techniques which eventually led to establishment of the Queensland Skin Culture Centre (QSCC), a service which uses a patient’s own cells to grow new skin faster than ever before.
Professor Pegg was a constant advocate for burns patients, staff education and facility upgrades - finally getting his wish in 1977 with the creation of Queensland’s only specialist burns centre for adults and paving the way for a specialist children’s centre a decade later.
Professor Pegg is remembered as a hero and saviour by thousands of burns victims including then six-year-old Cairns victim Jandamarra O’Shane, who credits Professor Pegg with saving his life after he was doused in petrol and set on fire at school in 1996.
The exemplary and inspirational qualities demonstrated by Professor Pegg included leadership and mentorship, innate kindness and the deepest compassion.
As evidence of his service Professor Pegg was the recipient of the following awards in recognition of his service to Queensland, Australian and internationally:
- 1974 – Churchill Fellowship
- 1977 – RBWH Stuart Pegg Adult Burns Centre
- 1986 – Children’s Hospital Paediatric Burns Centre (Pegg Leditschke Children’s Burns Centre)
- 1990 – Vice President of the International Society of Burn Injuries
- 1996 – Member of the Order of Australia, Queen’s Birthday Honours for Services to Medicine
- 2018 – King’s College Vice-Chancellor’s Alumni Excellence Award
