This biography was compiled by Dawn Elder based on secondary sources.
Contents
1956 graduate
Ngaire Walsh did well at medical school and was always among the top students. (1) She graduated first with a BSc in physiology in 1952, then MB ChB in 1956 and MD in 1963. She was awarded the Lady King Scholarship in 1959 and 1961 and used it to undertake data collection for her MD thesis, titled ‘Nutritional State and Serum Cholesterol Levels in Relation to Normal Feeding Regimes in the First Year of Life’.
Walsh married in 1963. In 1964–68, while she was looking after her two small children, she held various part-time and relieving clinical posts at Dunedin Hospital.
She was president of the Dunedin branch of the Medical Women’s Association, and during her tenure a working party under the leadership of Barbara Heslop documented the professional activity of medical women in New Zealand; the results were published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 1973. (2)
This group contributed to the political discussion that resulted in the medical reserve scheme, which provided medical employment opportunities for a small number of women with family commitments. In 1970, Walsh was appointed parttime lecturer in anatomy and histology for medical and home science students at the University of Otago.
In 1975 her health deteriorated and she resigned from this role as she required cardiac surgery. From then on, she worked more in a voluntary capacity and was involved in the natural family planning movement both in New Zealand and overseas. Ngaire Walsh died in 1982.
References:
- “Obituary. Ngaire Margaret Walsh (Nee McKerrow),” New Zealand Medical Journal 95 (January 27, 1982): 52.
- Heslop BF, Molloy RJ, Waal-Manning HJ, Walsh NM, “Women in Medicine” New Zealand Medical Journal, 77 (1973): 219-229.
