It is fair to say Adjunct Clinical Professor Karen Price’s term as RACGP president has been like no other — both on a professional and personal level.

She first learned she had won the college election the same day she was taken in for a procedure to confirm a breast cancer diagnosis. 

But having then undergone a double mastectomy, she led the profession through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, while spending more than a third of her presidency — 262 days — in lockdown. 

“I did feel a bit like the Rapunzel President locked in the tower and hair growing mercilessly — and then I had the great luck to go on national television with months of bad hair days,” she quipped in her final address at the RACGP’s annual conference in Melbourne on Friday.