Meet Dr Ian Chan

Hi I'm Dr Ian Chan (MBBS syd, FRACS orth). I was born in Singapore but I have been living in Australia since I was nine years old. I spent my early years in Beverly Hills in Sydney, then attended the University of Sydney for my Medical Degree and trained to become an Orthopaedic Surgeon at Liverpool Hospital and in Newcastle. I was very lucky to find myself practising here in Coffs Harbour where I have been situated for over 24 years now. What a wonderful, wonderful place to live!

My mother always said to me that if you are going to do anything, you do to your best ability. I have tried to adhere to her teachings my whole life. I have been very lucky to have been able to be an orthopaedic surgeon as it combines my love of fixing things with my fascination of how the human body works so well! It also allows me to indulge in finding out about how people think and do things differently depending on their culture, upbringing and life experiences. I have heard that my nickname is "Have a Chat Chan".

I have been very lucky to have been able to be an orthopaedic surgeon as it combines my love of fixing things with my fascination of how the human body works so well!

I have dedicated my life to living up to my mother's advice and hence I have focused my practice on performing surgery on patients with painful hip and knee joints as well as working as part of a team at the Coffs Harbour Base Hospital to treat people who have had significant injuries to their limbs for over 24 years.

In order to achieve and maintain a high level of skills I have visited and worked with many different surgeons at different institutions in Australia and Overseas, attended multiple meetings all over the world to learn the latest techniques in the surgery that I perform, tried different techniques that have a proven record of giving better results for the patient and I have looked into new technologies including the use of computers and robots that may benefit my patients. My anaesthetist and I were the first to use techniques such as the judicious use of local anaesthetic injections throughout the surgical procedure to minimise pain after operations and the use of tranexamic acid to minimise blood loss in our patients here in Coffs Harbour, and they have proven to be of great benefit.

I started performing total hip replacements using the anterior approach so that patients can recuperate quickly and to have a more stable hip to allow them to get back to their activities that they enjoy in a more normal pattern. I have been performing these approaches on a regular basis for the past three years on nearly 200 patients.

My goal is to continue learning so that I can give everybody in Coffs Harbour the best result that we can hope for. I am very happy that the published results in the Australian registry of orthopaedic surgery (2016, 2017, 2018) demonstrate that my results are superior to the averaged results of all Australian orthopaedic surgeons. I will endeavour to keep up those results as it gives me great pleasure to see my patients return with a smile on their face instead of the look of pain that they used to have.