02/06/2026
One of Townsville University Hospital’s longest-serving staff specialists, Dr Kimberly Oman, recently called time on hospital life.
The infectious diseases specialist retired after more than 25 years with the Health Service, with just a small cohort of doctors from her era still kicking about the hospital.
“We came here at the beginning of 2001 and I started working with the School of Medicine to help set up the new MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) program, and since then I was a director of physician education for a few years and worked with the infectious diseases department,” Dr Oman said.
“From that era, there’s only a few physicians left; Dr Kunwarjit Sangla and I started on the same day, he was actually my registrar, and now he’s my boss, Dr Tracey Symmons was a rehabilitation registrar who’s now a consultant and helped setup the department, and Dr Arun Menon who’s the director of sexual health.”
Passionate about helping small communities fight infectious diseases, Dr Oman has travelled to places like Papua New Guinea and Fiji to combat the spread of HIV, something she said will continue in her retirement.
“The HIV epidemic has hit them really hard, so what I’m doing at the moment is helping write up the guidelines and working on a national prescriber program which takes the burden off my Fijian colleagues,” she said.
But it won’t just be all work for Dr Oman, she is, after all, retired now.
“For the rest of my time I think I’ll aim to get really fit, travel, do some hikes, swim, take more ballet classes, and spend a lot of time doing more trips to visit family.”
