Our team

Dr Michelle Gold is the Director of Palliative Care at Alfred Health and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer with Monash University. Dr Michelle Gold is a Palliative Care Physician and the Director of the Palliative Care Service. Her interests, both in terms of service provision and research, include ensuring a high quality of palliative care for people who may not fall into the groups who traditionally access those services. Michelle has roles in teaching at both Alfred Health and Monash University, mentors junior medical staff and participates in research. She is an RACP Approved Supervisor, a tutor for the Medical Law Program (Monash University) and has an interest in Clinical Ethics, particularly at the interface with Palliative Care. Michelle has spoken widely to community groups on topics related to Palliative Care and Voluntary Assisted Dying.

She is currently the President-elect of the ANZSPM and past president of the Chapter Committee of Palliative Medicine, RACP, having served on that committee for many years. She is also a member of the Southern Metropolitan Palliative Care Consortium Executive.

Her clinical interests include aspects of both malignant and non-malignant palliative medicine and she is active in mentoring junior medical staff.

Dr Cathy Corbett is both a Palliative Medicine and General Medicine Physician and continues to work in both specialities. Her main areas of interest are in the health of older people and those with multiple medical issues. Cathy strives to achieve the highest quality of holistic care at every point in the health journey and is aware that more people are dying in the acute hospital setting. She has recently published an article titled ‘Understanding end-of-life care in Australian hospitals’ in the hope that we can better understand the needs in this area. Collaboration with other teams is also important to her and she is part of the ‘Breathlessness and Advanced Respiratory Disease’ clinic alongside a Respiratory physician here at the Alfred.

Dr Naomi Katz is a Palliative Care Physician who works with both adults and children. She has appointments at Alfred Health, Melbourne Health/Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. She has honorary academic appointments at Monash University and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and is undertaking a qualitative PhD through the University of Melbourne. Naomi has a special interest in palliative care for children, adolescents and young adults. In addition to direct clinical care, Naomi is passionate about education and research, and is the Research Lead for the Alfred Health Palliative Care Service.

Dr Akshay Kulkarni is a physician in general and acute medicine and palliative medicine. He holds a Fellowship to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine (FRACP, FAChPM). His other appointments include Peninsula Home Hospice and Eastern Health.

His areas of interest include integration of inpatient and community palliative care services. He also has a special focus in improving communication skills in junior doctors across various platforms within Alfred Health.

Dr Umbreen Qazi is a Palliative Care physician and General Practitioner. Her interests include non-malignant palliative care, malignant pain management, clinical supervision and education. She works in The Breathlessness and Advanced Lung Diseases Clinic, providing high-level care to patients with advanced lung diseases. She has a particular interest in patients with advanced lung conditions and lung transplantation

Dr Chi Li is a Palliative Care Physician at Alfred Health Palliative Care Service and an Adjunct Lecturer at Monash University. He has a longstanding interest in non-malignant palliative care, especially advanced lung and heart diseases and transplantation. He worked in the heart and lung transplant services at The Alfred as part of his physician training, followed by a fellowship with the lung transplant service examining the supportive and palliative care needs of candidates, recipients and their caregivers, which included undertaking observerships at the lung and heart transplant services at Toronto General Hospital (Canada) and Harefield Hospital (United Kingdom). He continues to work closely with the heart and lung transplant services and regularly reviews transplant patients in his Palliative Care Outpatient Clinic.

Dr Kerry McLaughlin is a pain specialist and specialist anaesthetist. She works as a pain specialist consultant with the Palliative care team. She has a specialist interest in interventions for pain management, complex cancer and non-cancer pain. Kerry is the acting head of acute pain services for Alfred health and also works as a consultant in the Caulfield chronic pain management Centre and research centre.

Gael Wilder is a Lead CNC with the Palliative Care Consult Service. She started her nursing career in 1982 and her experience, mostly in Oncology, spans across Inpatient Wards, Oncology Hospital In The Home, Day Chemo Therapy, Radiation Oncology as a NUM and now CNC in Palliative Care. She is responsible for the daily co-ordination of the consult service triaging referrals across all Alfred Campuses.

Chris qualified as a nurse in 2002 and has worked in acute and subacute inpatient areas as well as in community settings. Chris's nursing background encompasses accident and emergency, intensive care, geriatric outreach and palliative care. Chris received endorsement as a nurse practitioner in 2020 and co-ordinates the Alfred's rapid-response palliative care outreach service, PATS (the Palliative Assessment and Treatment Service). He also works as a clinician in the Alfred Oncology and Palliative Care Clinic. Chris has a particular interest in the provision of palliative care for older people, those living in residential aged care and in non-malignant populations more broadly.    

Dr Lucy Forrest is a Registered Music Therapist, Researcher & Clinical Supervisor, specialising in adult and paediatric palliative care across malignant and non-malignant disease.