Background
Associate Professor Caroline Dowling graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1994, the top student at the Royal Melbourne Hospital Clinical School. She completed her Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Urology in 2003.
She then completed post fellowship training in neuro-urology and incontinence at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Whilst working at Melbourne Health (the Royal Melbourne Hospital), and Southern Health (now Monash Health) urology departments as a consultant urologist and as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery at Monash University, she completed a post fellowship training year in urogynaecology.
Leadership
Associate Professor Dowling has been the Clinical Director of the Urology Unit at Eastern Health for the past 2 years. She is responsible for the delivery of urological services to over 2800 square kilometres of outer eastern Melbourne from Box Hill to as far as the Yarra Ranges. Within the Eastern Health urology service she runs the Functional Urology service that delivers subspecialty care and expert diagnosis in continence and pelvic floor dysfunction issues.
She also directs the Urology Unit in it’s delivery of uro-oncology and management of stone disease. There are 16 urologists working in the service and two training urologists accredited by the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand (USANZ). She is a strong advocate of flexible training pathways for training surgeons in urology..
Professional Profile
Associate Professor Dowling is a member of USANZ, the Continence Foundation of Australia, the International Continence Society and the Society of Urodynamics and Female Pelvic Medicine and Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU). She has been a past editor of the Cancer Council's Victorian Co-operative Oncology Group publication and is widely published in Urological journals and book chapters.She is a founding member of "A Woman's Urologist" a website aimed at empowering women to learn more about the treatments and assessment available for their incontinence and prolapse. This has been crucial since the findings of the Senate Inquiry into Transvaginal Mesh and related issues to which Associate Professor Dowling made a submission on behalf of USANZ.
More recently Associate Professor Dowling has appeared as the subject of an article in The Australian newspaper about women in surgery.
Career Interests
Associate Professor Dowling has a long term interest in both simple and video urodynamic studies leading to expert diagnosis of bladder disorders in men, women and young adults.
She offers both mesh and non mesh alternatives for the treatment of stress incontinence and prolapse and is expert and one of Australia's leading providers of bulking agents, a minimally invasive day case procedure, for stress incontinence.
Practice Locations
Associate Professor Dowling practices in general urology, neurourology and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery in private practice, based principally in the Malvern and Box Hill areas. She operates at Cabrini Hospital Malvern, Epworth Eastern and Epworth Hawthorn.Her public appointments have also included Melbourne Health (Royal Melbourne Hospital) where she set up multidisciplinary clinics for female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, continued to develop the neuro-urology service and the transition of young adults with complex congenital urology conditions and has worked for more than 15 years.
