Dr Morrison – a Profile

Dr Morrison lives on a property on the northern outskirts of Sydney with one husband, two children, three dogs and four horses.  Being a great animal lover, she owns and operates a guest house for cats and dogs there.

After thirty years she has retired from general practice but still continues to be involved with traditional herbal medicine.

She was born in the north of Scotland back in the last century when the Loch Ness monster still roamed the planet.  A publican’s daughter, she decided she wanted to be a doctor whilst still in early primary school.  Her only family connection to healing was her great-great-great grandmother who was the village midwife at a time when home births where the norm, infant mortality was high and doctors were for the well-to-do.

After completing her primary and secondary education at Milne’s High School Fochabers, she studied medicine at Aberdeen University.  Upon graduating, she immediately moved south to the warmer climes of England and went on to four years of travel and post graduate training in preparation for general practice.  This included terms in Medicine in Windsor, Surgery in Essex, then Accident and Emergency in Norwich.

During this time, she migrated to Australia and did rural locums in country New South Wales, followed by a move to Sydney and terms in Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and finally a year of Paediatrics at The Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital in Randwick.  Eventually she established her own practice on Sydney’s North Shore.

After the first few years of marvelling at being able to whip out the prescription pad for the ailments that presented; she began to feel frustrated with the pharmaceutically based approach to general practice, which predominated in the eighties.  A prescription was the expected outcome of most consultations; side-effects were tolerated as part and parcel of treatment; and symptoms were often suppressed rather than treated at the source.

When she and her husband started their family, both children exhibited asthmatic tendencies and Rosslyn was determined that they would not be spending a significant part of their childhood on steroids and bronchodilators.  This was the start of a search to find another approach which eventually led to Western Herbal Medicine, the philosophy of which immediately struck a chord.  

She subsequently completed a three year Diploma of Botanical Medicine with further training in counselling and nutritional medicine.  For most of her career she effectively combined the roles of a practicing GP and herbalist, offering patients a conventional GP consultation coupled, where relevant, with appropriate herbal remedies, nutritional advice and lifestyle counselling.