Assoc Prof Ramesh 'Ram' Nataraja

Overview

Ram is a dual-qualified (UK & Australia) General Paediatric Surgeon working at Monash Children’s Hospital in Melbourne Australia. He has interests in Minimally Invasive Surgery, Thoracic, Upper & Lower Gastroinstestinal and Onology Surgery. He believes that all children should have an equal access to the most up-to-date techniques and surgical modalities to ensure that they have the best chance of an excellent recovery. He joined Monash Children's Hospital in 2015 after working as a consultant at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and The Royal London Hospital in London, United Kingdom.

He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paediatrics at Monash University and coordinates paediatric simulation-based educational activities at MCH in his role as the Director of Surgical Simulation and Co-Chair of the Simulation Service. These include national ssurgical simulation-based courses. He is also both the postgraduate and undergraduate lead for paediatric surgery at Monash Health and Monash University. 

He has been a pioneer in both minimally invasive surgery in children and surgical simulation for many years having designed the first validated paediatric surgical bench trainer model in 2002 at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

He has an educational and clinical research background with 57 peer reviewed publications, 65 international conference presentations, 2 textbooks published by Wiley-Blackwell and 8 book chapters.

He is also passionate about educational reform in Low- and Middle-Income countries having been the Monash Children’s Hospital International country lead for Myanmar, successful conducting a simulation-based medical education programme for the last 4 years with his local in country colleagues. This work also has led as temporary advisor to the World Health Organisation, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.