Beneath the Armour

In this week's show I spoke with the fabulous Amy Sherer. Amy is an Endorsed Registered Midwife and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. She runs her own Lactation Consultancy, 'Her Luminary', as well as working at an outpatient clinic in Metro Melbourne.Amy began her journey in New Zealand, where she trained as a direct entry Midwife. As she touches upon in this candid discussion, she experienced and continues to deal with the clash in culture of values between the w...

Today’s guest is Stephen Trzeciak, Professor of Medicine and Chairman and Chief of the Department of Medicine at Cooper University Health, Camden, New Jersey. Stephen is a practicing intensivist and self-confessed “research nerd” who has amassed over 100 publications in the medical literature and a whopping 15,000 citations for his work. In today’s episode we talk about Stephen’s book “Compassionomics: The Revolutionary scientific evidence that caring makes a difference.” ...

Welcome to episode 10! If you are a doctor or healthcare professional who suffers from intense anxiety, this podcast is for you! I I speak to Dr Mark Cross, a psychiatrist with clinical experience over three decades (further info on his bio at the end of the show notes). Mark wrote a book last year all about his own experience with anxiety; he's something of a role model in the world of being open about his very human difficulties, whilst still operating at the top of his game in psychia...

Welcome to Episode 9 of the podcast!In this episode I bring you a special interview. My wife, Olivia, kindly agreed to interview me on a topic which I think is really important - how do you successfully change career direction in healthcare?By way of background, I am a clinical psychologist and I have changed jobs several times and shifted career pathways twice in the 5 years since I qualified from my doctorate. I also had started out initially in the academic world, before realising I wanted...

This week I talk to Dr Caroline Walker, a psychiatrist from the UK who created The Joyful Doctor, an organisation devoted to supporting the well-being of doctors and other healthcare professionals through coaching and training.Given that Caroline’s and my mission are virtually identical, albeit serving people in different parts of the world (UK and Australia), it felt only natural to reach out and have a good old chat with her about her journey. Caroline’s story is so inspiring. She drea...

Please don't forget to leave a rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts and share the episode with anyone who may like it!Episode 7 Show NotesDanny Hills is an Associate Professor of Nursing and Deputy Dean of the School of Health Sciences at Federation University in Ballarat in rural Victoria, Australia. Danny has a really varied background in nursing and in the past ten years or so has pursued more of an academic path by completing his PhD and doing research investigating violenc...

This week I was delighted to have been joined by a wonderful guest on the other side of the world in Canada, Dr Dayna Lee-Baggley. Dayna is a Clinical Psychologist and researcher in Nova Scotia, Canada and has interests in psychological approaches for management of chronic health conditions and also preventative measures for enhancing well-being. Dayna recently wrote the book, "Healthy Habits Suck" which is all about health behaviour change and draws primarily on Acceptance an...

Summary This week I’m excited to bring you the first of my conversations with a nurse! Alicia Perkins is a lecturer in nursing at Federation University in Australia. She has worked clinically in a variety of areas across her career, including cardiology and critical care. Notably, her leadership roles have involved managing a variety of cardiac catheter laboratories in both Cyprus and Australia (this is a hospital room where doctors perform minimally invasive tests and procedur...

I’m excited to bring you a conversation with Dr Josh Rosen. Josh is a pathology registrar working in a rural hospital in Victoria, Australia. In this fascinating conversation he talks about the realities of medical training and what it's like to be a doctor.He delves candidly beneath the armour of medicine and reveals the attitude in medical training toward recognition of emotions; the focus on technical skills; insights into doctor behaviour and culture and discusses the pros and cons o...

Welcome to episode 3 of BTA podcast! I was extremely pleased to get Professor Ian Hickie on this week to talk about mental health and Ian’s life and career. Ian is Co-Director, Health and Policy at The University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre and is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow. We cut across a range of issues in this discussion. As always, I try to guide my guests to talk about their own personal experience of their journey and not focus too much on career success and s...