Spotlight
Profile Mary Ip: at the intersection of art and science 80 years ago, when a civil war was ravaging mainland China, Mary Ip’s parents left their home in the southern province of Guangdong to seek a haven in Hong Kong. In 1954, her mother gave birth to Ip, the eleventh child in the family. The hazards of growing up at that time meant that only seven would survive. Ip’s father had been a Chinese literature teacher in Guangdong, and her mother had made a living by selling homemade cakes on the roadside. After they arrived in Hong Kong, Ip’s father took a clerical job, and, in spite of the family’s tight budget, hired a private tutor to teach his children Mandarin Chinese, because their school did not offer instruction. The wisdom of this decision is clear in light of how deeply Hong Kong’s economy is now intertwined with China’s. “Visionary” is the word that Ip uses to describe her parents. The couple’s foresight was also brought to light when Ip built a career that would ultimately lead to the presidency of the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology. Ip—now Mok Hing-Yu Chair Professor in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Hong Kong—recalls that when she had to choose a college major in the mid-1970s, her mother said the family lacked a doctor—a profession that was widely respected in Hong Kong. “They explicitly said they’d like to have a medical member in the family, because there are always small health problems at home”, Ip tells The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. “Although my six other brothers and sisters all did very well, none of them studied medicine. I was the last one!” Ip’s mother had chronic ulcers in her gastrointestinal tract and travelled between home and hospital for many years, although this problem can now be cured in a matter of months. Ip, who was the youngest daughter and lived at home, assumed the responsibility of accompanying her mother. The pain her mother endured and the kindness and professionalism shown by the family doctor strengthened Ip’s determination to study medicine. Today, Ip is one of the most influential respiratory experts in Asia, heading the Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of the Department of Medicine at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong. Much of Ip’s research has been focused on sleep-disordered breathing and airway diseases, which she began exploring in the mid-1990s. Ip had just obtained her medical degree from the University of Hong Kong, and was promoted from a medical officer to the academic staff at Queen Mary Hospital. In her daily practice, she noticed that many of her patients had irregular sleep patterns and displayed extreme sleepiness in the day, yet nobody considered that a problem. Obstructive sleep apnoea, which was later shown to be the cause, was 290
not widely recognised in the Asian medical community until Ip drew attention to the problem. In 2001, Ip led a groundbreaking study of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome, in which 1542 middle-aged male office workers in Hong Kong were surveyed and clinically assessed. With the model she built with her colleagues, the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome in Hong Kong was estimated to be 4·1%. Body-mass index and age were shown to be closely associated with sleep-disordered breathing. Since then, “there is an increasing recognition from the public and also within the professional community about sleep apnoea”, comments Chi-Leung Lam, a clinical assistant professor who specialises in lung cancer and airway diseases, and works closely with Ip at Queen Mary Hospital and has known her for 20 years. “She pioneered the research in this region, and also the association of sleep apnoea with metabolic problems.” Lam says that Ip’s contributions to research into obstructive sleep apnoea include not only exploration of the aetiology in the Asian population, but also improvements in treatment. When the disease was initially recognised in Hong Kong, patients tended to have direct surgery to repair the problem, but, in Ip’s eyes, this strategy could harm the patients’ quality of life. She, instead, promoted treatment with continuous positive airway pressure, for which patients need only to wear a special mask during sleep to greatly help breathing. Ip is known for her caring personality, which she partly attributes to her sex. She notes that women are outnumbered by men in the medical profession, especially in Asia. Sometimes, that means women might not be taken as seriously as men are, but female doctors are given extra attention by patients, who often speak more with them. Lam added that Ip cares not only for her patients, but also for her trainees and students, who she will check in with about final examinations, as well as their personal lives. Emphasising that patients should be treated as a “whole”, Ip says that she spends as much time as she can with her patients to understand their life and individual needs. She believes that counselling and treatment of patients is more of an art than a science, because each patient is different and needs to be handled as such. “I really like being a doctor, which is fundamentally a combination of art and science”, Ip confesses. “At the end of the day, many problems cannot be cured or even improved by science. But by understanding that people have diverse personalities, you can make life more comfortable for them.”
Beibei Bao www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 June 2013
Profile Mary Ip: at the intersection of art and science 80 years ago, when a civil war was ravaging mainland China, Mary Ip’s parents left their home in the southern province of Guangdong to seek a haven in Hong Kong. In 1954, her mother gave birth to Ip, the eleventh child in the family. The hazards of growing up at that time meant that only seven would survive. Ip’s father had been a Chinese literature teacher in Guangdong, and her mother had made a living by selling homemade cakes on the roadside. After they arrived in Hong Kong, Ip’s father took a clerical job, and, in spite of the family’s tight budget, hired a private tutor to teach his children Mandarin Chinese, because their school did not offer instruction. The wisdom of this decision is clear in light of how deeply Hong Kong’s economy is now intertwined with China’s. “Visionary” is the word that Ip uses to describe her parents. The couple’s foresight was also brought to light when Ip built a career that would ultimately lead to the presidency of the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology. Ip—now Mok Hing-Yu Chair Professor in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Hong Kong—recalls that when she had to choose a college major in the mid-1970s, her mother said the family lacked a doctor—a profession that was widely respected in Hong Kong. “They explicitly said they’d like to have a medical member in the family, because there are always small health problems at home”, Ip tells The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. “Although my six other brothers and sisters all did very well, none of them studied medicine. I was the last one!” Ip’s mother had chronic ulcers in her gastrointestinal tract and travelled between home and hospital for many years, although this problem can now be cured in a matter of months. Ip, who was the youngest daughter and lived at home, assumed the responsibility of accompanying her mother. The pain her mother endured and the kindness and professionalism shown by the family doctor strengthened Ip’s determination to study medicine. Today, Ip is one of the most influential respiratory experts in Asia, heading the Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of the Department of Medicine at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong. Much of Ip’s research has been focused on sleep-disordered breathing and airway diseases, which she began exploring in the mid-1990s. Ip had just obtained her medical degree from the University of Hong Kong, and was promoted from a medical officer to the academic staff at Queen Mary Hospital. In her daily practice, she noticed that many of her patients had irregular sleep patterns and displayed extreme sleepiness in the day, yet nobody considered that a problem. Obstructive sleep apnoea, which was later shown to be the cause, was 290
not widely recognised in the Asian medical community until Ip drew attention to the problem. In 2001, Ip led a groundbreaking study of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome, in which 1542 middle-aged male office workers in Hong Kong were surveyed and clinically assessed. With the model she built with her colleagues, the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome in Hong Kong was estimated to be 4·1%. Body-mass index and age were shown to be closely associated with sleep-disordered breathing. Since then, “there is an increasing recognition from the public and also within the professional community about sleep apnoea”, comments Chi-Leung Lam, a clinical assistant professor who specialises in lung cancer and airway diseases, and works closely with Ip at Queen Mary Hospital and has known her for 20 years. “She pioneered the research in this region, and also the association of sleep apnoea with metabolic problems.” Lam says that Ip’s contributions to research into obstructive sleep apnoea include not only exploration of the aetiology in the Asian population, but also improvements in treatment. When the disease was initially recognised in Hong Kong, patients tended to have direct surgery to repair the problem, but, in Ip’s eyes, this strategy could harm the patients’ quality of life. She, instead, promoted treatment with continuous positive airway pressure, for which patients need only to wear a special mask during sleep to greatly help breathing. Ip is known for her caring personality, which she partly attributes to her sex. She notes that women are outnumbered by men in the medical profession, especially in Asia. Sometimes, that means women might not be taken as seriously as men are, but female doctors are given extra attention by patients, who often speak more with them. Lam added that Ip cares not only for her patients, but also for her trainees and students, who she will check in with about final examinations, as well as their personal lives. Emphasising that patients should be treated as a “whole”, Ip says that she spends as much time as she can with her patients to understand their life and individual needs. She believes that counselling and treatment of patients is more of an art than a science, because each patient is different and needs to be handled as such. “I really like being a doctor, which is fundamentally a combination of art and science”, Ip confesses. “At the end of the day, many problems cannot be cured or even improved by science. But by understanding that people have diverse personalities, you can make life more comfortable for them.”
Beibei Bao www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 June 2013
