Behind the scenes, the work she did meant that the hospital service in Canberra wasn't overwhelmed as the virus rampaged towards the ACT.

In March 2020, in the earliest stages of the pandemic, there was a make-or-break weekend when decision-takers at the highest levels of the ACT were debating whether or not a severe lockdown should happen, with its resulting clamp on the economy.

Experts in Canberra were divided.

But she had been monitoring the situation in Europe - at that time, the frontline of the pandemic - so she knew that a disaster was on the way if a hard barrier wasn't placed very quickly in front of the outbreak.

Through her international contacts, she saw the future which was heading to Canberra. "In Italy, where the health system is first class, doctors were saying they were unable to manage the number of patients presenting to intensive care. They were having to make decisions about who could access a ventilator and who couldn't."

So, behind the scenes, far from cameras, she waded into the political debate - and the lockdown happened.

She wears many hats, both academic and as a working doctor: dean of medicine at the ANU medical school, as well as a senior physician in intensive care at Canberra Hospital.

During the first, pre-vaccine stages of the pandemic, she switched between the ward and the office.

The recent role is as clinical director of the ACT COVID-19 response. It involved assessing the broad situation, taking into account the best knowledge in a fast-moving new situation and presenting it to the ACT government to act on or not.

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She had a small team of people, including medical students, and she is the first to say she relied on them. "There was never any grumbling. Everybody pulled their weight."

But without her clout in corridors of power, the pandemic would have taken a different - worse - course.

One of her duties was to decide who should be allowed into Canberra Hospital during the severe lockdown. Medical staff were allowed in automatically but contractors, for example, weren't. Nor were the relatives of patients.

"It was huge and stressful," she says. To allow a relative into hospital might allow the virus in, but to keep a relative out would be heart-breaking. "Are you going to let COVID in or are you going to prevent someone's daughter seeing their father dying?"

The work was relentless. She said she would get home half an hour before midnight and be back at work again at 7.30am.

As a doctor in the intensive care unit, she deals with life-and-death situations. Part of her role is to connect to families who are often in great distress, "helping them understand what's going on".

She spends up to an hour with families, simply listening and explaining, "and I don't think I appreciated the privilege of doing that".

By "privilege", she means the privilege of being utterly trusted by strangers who share their deepest thoughts and fears. "They say things they wouldn't say to anyone else," she said.

Some patients do recover and leave the intensive care unit, and some don't.

When she finishes work, Professor Mitchell can leave the trauma behind - mostly. But occasionally, a situation gets to her - say when a child dies and the child is the same age as her daughter.

With the worst of the pandemic over, what does she feel? "As a territory and as a nation, we are weary."

She doesn't make a great show of her Queen's Birthday Honour. "Someone was very kind and wrote in," is the way she explains it. A quiet hero.

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