April 6th 2026
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WellBeing Magazine
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Dr Dinesh Palipana overcame spinal cord injury to become a doctor, advocate and researcher working to restore movement for millions.
One puddle of water changed Dinesh Palipana’s life forever.
On a rainy Sunday evening in 2010, Palipana, then a medical student, was driving home from his parents’ house when his car aquaplaned on water and rolled off the highway. At 25 years old, Palipana was paralysed from the chest down and told that his dream of becoming a doctor was over.
Despite a long and difficult recovery, Palipana wasn’t ready to give up his dream. Although he faced ableism in the medical field, he became the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland and the second person with quadriplegia to graduate as a doctor in Australia and the first with spinal cord injury.
Now aged 40, Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM is a doctor, researcher, lawyer and disability advocate. Palipana was also a senior advisor to The Disability Royal Commission and in 2021 he was awarded Queenslander of the Year for his advocacy for doctors with disabilities. He is also a working doctor in one of the busiest emergency departments in the country.
“I love being with patients. I love the challenge and the complexity of medicine. I love everything about it, and for me, it feels really purposeful,” says Palipana. “I think if I can spend my life doing this, then I can die happy, feeling like I’ve done something meaningful with life.”
Palipana is also spearheading a research project that could restore movement for people with spinal cord injury through using virtual reality technology, potentially changing the lives of the more than 15 million people globally living with the condition.
“I’m not sad that this accident happened. I don’t hate my life,” says Palipana. “But we have to work towards some progress, no matter what challenges human beings face. And while I’m not sad about it, it is a hard journey … so I always thought about what is next? What does the future look like for people with spinal cord injury?”
The lucky country
Palipana was born in Sri Lanka, a country which he remembers as “a really beautiful place, physically”, but one that he said has historically been troubled by civil war. His mum was always a pillar of strength and stability for him when he was growing up. “She gave me everything she could and there was always love,” recalls Palipana. “But before the age of 10, I saw things like people being burnt alive. I’ve seen people shot. I’ve seen all kinds of violence and poverty and suffering.”
After moving to Australia on Palipana’s 10th birthday, his family lived in Sydney, then Byron Bay, before settling in Brisbane. Spending his younger years in a country so tarnished by conflict still has an impact on Palipana’s outlook on life. “I think living in that environment has given me a lot of perspective today. There’s so much war in the world, and growing up in that situation, it just gives me perspective about how lucky we are to live here in a country like Australia.”
Palipana’s mother always instilled in him the importance of education and having a secure job. He opted to study law, something he soon realised wasn’t right for him, although it would come in handy for his advocacy work later down the line.
But his path changed when he experienced depression during law school.
“It was a really dark time in my life, the depression. I was seeing a doctor at that stage and I think I was just really blown away by what he did for me, because the depression was so isolating, difficult, lonely. Paralysing, actually,” Palipana says. “I’m properly paralysed with spinal cord injury today, but the depression was actually very paralysing.”
Palipana was inspired by how his doctor helped him recover from depression, treating him with empathy and understanding. “I always quote my mum,” says Palipana, reflecting on how that doctor made him feel, “when she says, ‘By helping one person, we may not change the world, but we will change the world for them.’” Recovery from depression made Palipana realise he wanted to help other people, and his mum’s mantra still underpins how he treats his own patients today.
After finishing his law degree, Palipana refocused his goal and was accepted to medical school on the Gold Coast. Midway through his course, he was living in a flat, had a solid group of friends and life was good. But everything would change forever on one rainy night.
Reinvent life after spinal cord injury
After a family gathering at his parent’s home in Brisbane, Palipana was driving home when his car slipped on water, spun out of control, flipping nose to tail several times. When the car came to a stop, his T-shirt was soaked in blood. Being a medical student, Palipana knew his life would never be the same again when he couldn’t feel his legs. He was cut from the car and rushed to hospital, where his fears were confi rmed — he had spinal cord injury and was paralysed below the chest.
Palipana spent almost eight months in hospital, being treated and rehabilitated. “I cannot explain what it’s like just to suddenly lose control of your body,” he reflects. “That was really hard, going from being a 25-year-old independent guy to suddenly laying in your own waste for hours until the nurse comes around. It was really tough.”
Beyond the physical challenges, like adjusting to using a wheelchair and a catheter, his accident had an impact on his family too. “My dad left my mum. We sold our house,” recalls Palipana. “We had no money. We struggled for a long time.” But something that surprised Palipana was not just how his accident changed him physically, but mentally too. After a couple of years, during which he was still recovering and adjusting to his new situation, Palipana’s perspective on what was important shifted.
“I think sometimes we go along in life, holding on to these things that we think are important,” he says. “Like the apartment where I was staying … it was gone, because I obviously couldn’t pay for it. My car was gone. My stuff was gone. The clothes that I liked, the things that I used, everything that I really cherished, it was all gone.
“All those things that I thought were important are really not. When they were stripped away from me, I felt so free. And then I thought, ‘This is a chance to reinvent life and think about what is actually important to me.’”
Hope and hypocrisy
It took several years for Palipana to recover and adjust to his new way of life, with unwavering support from his mother. But there was something about him that his accident didn’t change — his passion to become a doctor. Determined to achieve his goal, Palipana returned to medical school on the Gold Coast in 2015.
“I really didn’t want to let that go, because it felt like this was my purpose. I was okay with trying and failing, but I wasn’t okay with not trying at all. That’s what kept me going.”
Palipana found strategies to treat patients with his injuries. Although he lost sensation in many of his fingers, he has sensation in his thumb and index finger, so can take pulses and can adjust his hand placement to grip tools such as a stethoscope. It all paid off and graduating medical school was “the best day of my life”.
But he soon realised that graduating was the easy part in comparison to securing employment with his disability. In most Australian states, upon graduation, domestic medical students are guaranteed a medical internship job in the state in which they studied. Palipana applied for his internship, disclosing his disability. Soon after, he received a letter stating that his application had been removed because of his spinal cord injury and there would be a bespoke process to consider his circumstances.
Months went by, his colleagues received news of their new jobs, but Palipana heard nothing. While waiting, he had the opportunity to attend an event where prominent politicians were speaking. “They gave speeches about equality, fairness and justice. That’s what they stood for, the politicians said proudly,” writes Palipana in his book, Stronger. “There I was, listening to this speech while being denied employment because of a disability, with no defi ciency in merit. The air was thick with hypocrisy. I was angry.”
Soon, the media started to report on his story. Friends, doctors, lawyers, politicians and people who had followed his journey started to drum up support. Several months later, on a Friday afternoon, he received a call from Gold Coast University Hospital — they offered him a job, starting on Monday.
Ableist attitudes
While Palipana loved his new role, he soon came to find that the biggest barriers in healthcare were not always physical, but attitudinal. “There were questions from some doctors, like ‘Will the patients take you seriously?’ There were these misconceptions about what I could do,” recalls Palipana. “Even in my own head, I thought, ‘Gosh, I wonder what the patient’s going to think’ … I had so many questions but, fortunately, I had a lot of good people on that journey who stood up for me when I couldn’t.”
Rather than seeing it as a negative, many of his patients have found comfort in being treated by a doctor with a disability, particularly those facing physical challenges themselves. “There’ve been a bunch of people with disabilities and various challenges in their life that I have had the privilege of seeing in the emergency department,” says Palipana. One particular patient, who had a significant disability, sticks in his mind. “When I went into their cubicle, they said, ‘I’m so glad that you’re my doctor today, because I know that you understand.’ So that was cool and makes it all worthwhile.”
Palipana has paved the way for other students with disabilities to enter the medical field. As co-founder of Doctors with Disabilities Australia, a not-for-profi t organisation that advocates for greater inclusivity in medical education and employment, he has worked with the Australian Medical Association to create national policies for inclusivity in medical education and employment.
Working on a spinal cord injury breakthrough
According to a report commissioned by Spinal Cure Australia and Insurance and Care NSW (icare), approximately 20,800 Australians live with spinal cord injury and these injuries are mostly due to traumatic events such as road traffic accidents, falls and sport injuries. Like Palipana, people who experience this have their entire lives thrown into disarray. That’s why Palipana, who is also a researcher and senior lecturer at Griffith University, is working on a project that aims to restore movement and sensation in people with spinal cord injury.
“One of the biggest heartbreaks in my life has been seeing the disconnection between the world of science and the community of people that science is supposed to benefit,” says Palipana. “I think the dialogue is not well formed. The connections are not well formed… So, I spoke to a lot of scientists, reached out to a lot of people. Eventually I thought, ‘I want to do something to take control and do my bit to move this piece forward.’”
In 2019, alongside friend and researcher Claudio Pizzolato, Palipana created Project Biospine. “What we’re doing is using thought control and electrical stimulation in virtual reality and drug therapy, which has shown, in isolation, to have a positive effect on people who are paralysed, helping them move their limbs again,” says Palipana.
Research participants wear a virtual-reality headset connected to an electroencephalogram that measures their brain activity. Seated on a thought-controlled bicycle, they imagine the act of cycling, which causes their virtual avatar to begin pedalling. This process helps train the brain to establish new patterns, while electrodes stimulate the participants’ leg muscles and spinal cord to mimic cycling. This can be graduated to an exoskeleton or assisted walking devices as function improves. The activity is carried out in combination with drug therapy. According to Palipana, the research follows some promising work done at Duke University, UCLA and in Switzerland.
Researchers had five patients trial the BioSpine therapy for a year and all of them showed improvements in muscle and bone density. “We are still in the process of publishing the findings, but it’s been encouraging to see some contractions return in muscles that have been paralysed for years, as well as some sensory function,” says Palipana.
The project just received funding for creating an exoskeleton, a machine-like frame that supports people to walk, says Palipana. “Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will have people standing up and using their hands again.” While there are no guarantees on a timeline, Palipana says he hopes to see results within a few years.
My own two feet
Palipana’s journey has inspired many with physical challenges, but also those facing other types of adversity. This moment became clear for him when he was invited to a wedding last year. The groom had been a medical student in an African country that was in conflict. His father was murdered and he’d been separated from his mum and sister in a refugee camp and told Palipana about how he’d fallen into a deep depression.
“He didn’t know what he was going to do, and he didn’t want to face this world anymore,” says Palipana. “But he said that one day he was at a bus stop and a bus pulled up with my face on it — it was from the university that I graduated from — and the ad said, ‘Who says a quadriplegic can’t become a doctor?’ And my now friend said, ‘I started thinking, damn, if this guy can become a doctor, I can still pursue my dream.’ He started studying again, got his undergrad degree and now he’s on his way working towards getting back into medical school. I think that was one of the most amazing things and it made this whole journey so worthwhile.”
Looking ahead, Palipana says his future plans are ones he never takes for granted. “Just before this accident happened, I had so many plans and ideas and dreams, and I have come to learn that, as they say, these are plans of mice and men, we don’t know what the world holds for us. So, the thing that I focus on is squeezing every drop out of life every single day.”
And how does Palipana embrace each moment? “I just love trying new things,” he says. “I went bungee jumping recently in Cairns. I’ve been skydiving, parasailing, climbed the Brisbane Story Bridge.”
Palipana remains a working doctor and is focused on Project BioSpine. He hopes that the project will one day help people like him to stand up tall and perform the daily activities that many people without disabilities take for granted.
“One of the things I always say is that the very last thing I did on my own two feet was give my mum a hug,” shares Palipana. “And I just look forward to doing that again.”
The post Doer and Thinker: Dr Dinesh Palipana appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
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