Dr Helen Wright is a Paediatrician and Medical Educator with the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA) and the Division of Paediatrics at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH). Helen is also co-lead of the statewide Child and Youth Health Network. Helen provides academic scholarship in teaching, research and leadership, with a rural focus.

She graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1995 and has been a general paediatrician since 2002. She was a rural paediatrician in Port Hedland from 2002 to 2005, where she began her academic career with RCSWA, before taking up positions at Fremantle Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital for Children. She currently works in the Department of General Paediatrics at PCH.

In 2009 Helen obtained a UWA Graduate Certificate in Rural and Remote Medicine, and a Certificate in Medical Education from the University of Dundee in 2011. She enrolled in a Masters of Rural and Remote Medicine in 2015, with the thesis submitted for examination in 2018.

Her research interests are primarily in medical education. She was awarded an Early Career Research Grant in 2012 to compare logs of paediatric cases by medical students in RCSWA to metropolitan students, which was the basis of her Masters thesis. This translational research provided local data on what students were learning, and has been used to inform teaching practices in the rural and urban schools, particularly feedback on cases logged.

Dr Wright is a member of the Community of Practice for the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching in the Health Professions, School of Allied Health, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. She has developed a number of innovative teaching resources. 

Dr Wright’s leadership and advocacy roles include establishing the WA Rural Paediatricians Network in 2018. The RCSWA Regional Training Hubs helped her support rural paediatricians obtain multiple rural paediatric postgraduate training positions across WA. in 2020 she was awarded Metropolitan-based Specialist Bush Champion, presented by Rural Health West and the WA Country Health Service. These celebrate the success and achievements of doctors who have dedicated their careers to rural and remote Western Australia.

Her work with Health Networks led the creation of the WA Youth Health Policy, published in 2018.

Helen was awarded an Improving Student Learning Grant in 2012 to initiate a Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) Program in Paediatric Clinical Examination. This was extended to rural sites in 2018. The PAL program was part of the Short Course "Education within the Clinical Setting" program for visiting international medical educators. Helen has developed several Virtual Patient teaching resources in paediatrics, and was awarded a Learning and Teaching Excellence Grant in 2023 to run multi-School workshops for Law, Medical and Philosophy students on Ethics of Asylum Seekers and Refugees.

Helen was nominated for a Teaching Award in 2014 for small group teaching, and was awarded a Team Teaching award in 2015. She was awarded a Faye Gale Fellowship in 2018, to the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia.

Helen is the Academic Mentor in Paediatrics with RCSWA, regularly presenting and facilitating videoconference teaching sessions including a Child and Adolescent mental health workshop. She is a member of the RCSWA assessment committee.

In the Division of Paediatrics Helen is a bedside tutor, lectures on Paediatric history and examination, and is a member of the teaching and learning committee.

Helen has representing Australia several times in the winter Olympic sport of curling. She has played in 70 matches at ten international events, captaining the team to winning a gold medal in the B-division of the Pan Continental Curling Championships, 2024.