The global COVID-19 pandemic has come off the back of a hellish summer of bushfires and floods in Australia, and the mental health of many Australians is, understandably, under strain.
Everyone will be feeling a bit anxious right now - and that’s totally normal. But some people will be feeling it worse than others - and some people may need help.
Today I’m interviewing Dr Jodie Lowinger, a clinical psychologist at Sydney Anxiety Clinic, and Associate Professor John Allan, the President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, to find out more about what people can do to manage their COVID-19 anxiety.

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Telehealth just became the number one priority for every GP clinic in the country due to the COVID-19 crisis.
But it's daunting to get telehealth up and running in just a few days when you’ve never so much as heard of a VPN before, you don’t even have a headset and you’ve lost your skype login details.
Don’t stress, we’ve produced a quick and dirty guide to telehealth. Listen in!
This podcast was recorded during the week starting 16 March.

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This episode we talk to a GP practice that is rapidly fighting to keep its doors open in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which has dried up its cash flow and left staff vulnerable

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Patients often rely on doctors for accurate information about end-of-life law, but surveys show that doctors aren’t always up to speed on this topic.
Ben White, a professor in the faculty of law at QUT, explains why the law matters in navigating this difficult area of medicine.
Resources:
End of Life Law in Australia – a website to help explain end of life law:https://end-of-life.qut.edu.au/
End of Life Law for Clinicians – a training program for clinicians about end of life law, funded by the Commonwealth Government:https://palliativecareeducation.com.au/course/index.php?categoryid=5
End of Life Directions for Aged Care Legal Toolkit:https://www.eldac.com.au/tabid/4902/Default.aspx

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GPs are gearing up for an inundation of COVID-19 patients, but there’s a lot of confusion out there about what needs to be done.
In this episode, we talk with a Sydney-based GP and a hospital radiographer about what’s happening at the frontlines of the COVID-19 response.
The situation is evolving quickly – this podcast was recorded on 11 March.

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How can prison be improving people’s health when the services are so limited?

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You’ve probably been hearing a lot of common sense advice about coronavirus, such as ‘wash your hands properly’, ‘don’t take a train and sneeze everywhere’, ‘wear a mask if you’re ill’, ‘call the GP instead of visiting in person’, ‘self-isolate at home’ and definitely ‘don’t touch your face’.
But what does self-solation actually look like?
And what happens if your patients live with family or live in a sharehouse? Does everyone in the house have to self-isolate? How do they prevent the infection spreading within the house?
In this episode, Dr Charlotte Hespe, a GP based in Sydney and the current chair of the RACGP NSW and ACT faculties, provides a few sensible suggestions.
If you’re looking for more information, the Australian Department of Health has also published some guidance on how to self-isolate.
This podcast was recorded on Friday 6 March.

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A burns and general surgeon, Dr Carl Lisec, shares his top tips for managing minor burn injuries in general practice

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As governments struggle to contain the unfolding pandemic, you might think we have little to learn about public health from 100 years ago. But as the 1918-19 flu pandemic was causing havoc around the world, Australia put up a surprisingly strong and sophisticated fight.

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Human language is hard for AI to wrap its circuit boards around at the best of times. But the typos, abbreviations, spelling mistakes, redundancy and messy structure of clinical notes makes it the worst-case scenario for text mining. Lots of research teams are trying to solve this problem – but it’s proving much more difficult than anyone expected.

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