The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Kate Mackay, educated at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Melbourne and the University of Melbourne, where she graduated MB BS in 1922 and MD in 1924, was acknowledged for her services to medicine with her appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 31 December 1977. After positions as resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne, the Royal Women’s and the Royal Children’s Hospitals, she became the first medical officer to the Department of Labour from 1925-1933 and was woman observer with the Australian Industry delegation to the United States of America in 1927. She maintained a long association with the Queen Victoria Hospital taking up the position of assistant physician to the in-patients in 1929 and becoming physician from 1930-1957. In a pioneering role, she founded the Diabetic Clinic at the same hospital and was its physician-in-charge from 1946-1953, having previously been physician-in-charge of the Diabetic Clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital from 1940-1945. From that position she moved to become consultant physician at the Royal Women’s Hospital from 1945-1973.