Professor Henry Woo

28/07/2023

Op Ed published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday 19 July 2023 for those who may have missed it or were unable to read it due to the paywall.

11/12/2022

After a 10 year hiatus from working in the NSW Public Hospital System, I am pleased to announce that I will be making a return with commencement to be in April 2023. I will be a 0.5FTE Staff Specialist in the WSLHD, and based at Blacktown Hospital. For those who have not seen this hospital in recent years, you would likely be blown away about the extent to which this facility has grown. When I attended my recent interview, I did not recognise the place and needed help to find the front entrance. I am excited to make this return and very much looking forward to it. Western Sydney University has established extraordinary infrastructure on campus and we will see what happens with regard to academic affilation there.

Above is the TL:DR version for those who do not wish to read on.

When I last worked in the WSLHD, I was a VMO with significant time commitment to Westmead and Blacktown Hospital. Whilst rewarding, this commitment was not conducive to the further development of my academic career and with my appointment to the then Sydney Adventist Hospital Clinical School, leaving the public system was going to release the time to undertake my doctoral thesis as well as throw myself into clinical research and clincial trials which has seen my journal publications grow to from less than 50 publications to almost 200 peer reviewed publications in international journals. It allowed my h-index to increase from around 20 to 46 over this time.

I have never forgotten that I received a free uninversity education and paid almost nothing to train as a surgeon. I will always be grateful for the opportunities that public education and the public hospital system has enabled my dream to become a surgeon. Whilst many will argue that I owe nothing to the public system, I have always felt this constant draw towards making a return and 10 years down the track seems a fitting time to make this return.

Whilst away from the public system, I did have an indirect access to the public system for my uninsured patients and I am eternally grateful for those colleagues of mine who never questioned my requests for them to look after these patients and to treat them in the public system with dignity and respect. You know who you are and you represent the best that we can ask of humanity.

18/05/2019

Fantastic story worth reading about.

20/09/2018

I am very grateful to a patient of mine who not only has a wonderful sense of humour, but had also gone to so much trouble to bring me this gift from his recent overseas travels. He went to a particular village in Chile where a local artist has a hobby of creating medically related pieces. As urologists we tend to use the index finger for examinations of the prostate but this model represents the old joke of where the middle finger has been used for the second opinion.

09/09/2018

It is extraordinary that there are people who genuinely believe that drinking their own urine has health benefits.
There is neither theoretical or clinical evidence of such benefit.
Whilst this story is not from the most illustrious news source, I am quite happy to put my name to calling out this ridiculous practice.

THESE people all have one thing in common – they all drink their own P*E. It may seem like a grim habit, but they swear by “urine therapy” and believe it’s helped them with anything from weight los…

30/08/2018

Wonderful how technology can bring surgeons together.
Telementoring working as it should.
What’s missing from this story is that prior to this, Dr Duthie came into my operating room, through the internet, to observe cases that I was performing in Sydney.

New surgical procedure to solve a common men's health issue performed in New Zealand.

12/07/2018

https://www.facebook.com/1459983214253215/posts/2066326360285561/

30/06/2018

I have the privilege of being the Convenor of the 2018 Annual Scientific of the Australian and New Zealand Uro-genital and Prostatic Cancer trials group (ANZUP).
The theme of the meeting is “Putting People First”.
The organising committee have put together a truly innovative scientific programme, with many new approaches to meeting format and interaction promised.
I wish to draw special attention to one innovation, which is to ‘pay it forward’ by supporting this amazing charity called Every Little Bit Helps. See the attached image lifted from our conference website. I think that this is a good fit with our meeting theme.
https://www.anzup.org.au/content.aspx?page=asm-home

31/05/2018

Hoping to see support for this year’s on Friday 1 June 2018.
I’ve shortlisted mine to be two of the following options:-
1. Colourful flowers (just because)
2. Bananas (I’ve been called this)
3. Pen*ses (urological anatomy)
4. Robots (assist me with my surgery)

21/05/2018

A great honour to receive a Journal of Urology Best Reviewer Award from the Editor in Chief Professor Joseph (Jay) Smith at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

16/05/2018

‪If a prostate cancer specialist is not participating in the “Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry of Australia and New Zealand”, you need to ask the question why not?‬
‪There really is NO excuse for a refusal to participate.‬