Purple Pen Podcast

We are joined by Professor Ian Hickie, a Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of Health and Policy at the Brain Mind Centre. He last spoke to the podcast on treatment resistance depression. This time we discuss the challenges of bipolar disorder diagnosis, risk factors and the therapeutics used in treatment, especially the Australian wonder drug Lithium.

Kristin chats to Dr Emma Gray, consultant respiratory physician and visiting medical officer at Royal Prince Alfred. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney.

There have been some big changes in asthma management in recent years, and Emma talks us through the key points.

Kristin caught up with Leanne Teoh, a pharmacist, dentist and research fellow from the University of Melbourne and Sophie Beaumont, head of Dental Oncology at the Peter Mac to discuss all things oral cancer.

We learn about diagnosis, presentation, vaccination and red flags - as well as the critical value of saliva!

Sophie recommends the Oral cancer hub as a great learning resource: https://www.oralcancerhub.org.au/

We're back for 2022 and now that's school is in session we spoke to Prof Brendan McMullan about COVID19 in children. We discussed what COVID19 is like for kids, vaccination, current treatments and transmission.

In our last episode for 2021, Kristin chats with Professor Ian Hickie, co-Director of the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney. We chat about treatment-resistant depression and learn all about the "happy accident'" of esketamine.

Dan is joined by Professor Robyn Guymer AM from the Centre for Eye Research in Australia to discuss Age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

We're back! And Dan is joined by Professor Dave Coghill, a Child Psychiatrist and Chair of Developmental Mental Health at the University of Melbourne.

We discuss ADHD - an overview of its epidemiology and diagnosis, as well as existing and emerging treatments.

Kristin caught up with Conjoint Professor Michael Bennett AM (Academic Head, Wales Anaesthesia and Dept. Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Prince of Wales Clinical School) to discuss Hyperbaric Medicine. It is used to treat decompression illness, carbon monoxide poisoning, necrotising infections, soft tissue & bony radiation injury and chronic non healing wounds.

Dan and Jane caught up with our friend Dr Nisha Khot, who is the Clinical Director of Obstetrics at Djerriwarrh Health Service in Victoria. We discuss the screening, management and impact of a wide variety of infections in pregnancy, including CMV, syphilis, COVID-19 and GBA. We briefly discuss listeria, to Nisha's chagrin.

You should definitely follow Nisha on twitter

In a bumper episode, Kristin talks with ID physician and clinical microbiologist with Westmead Hospital and the Institute Of Clinical Pathology And Medical Research (ICPMR) Dr Indy Sandaradura.

They discuss all things clinical microbiology, from how tests are run to how microbiologists decide what to report, in terms of sensitivities and positive results.

Indy helps us understand why we still do Gram staining, first developed by Danish scientist Hans Christian Gram in 1884.