Growing Pains

Sarah Barnard

Join us as we talk to fellow students and medical professionals about the challenges we may face navigating our personal and professional lives as future medics. Hosted by Sarah Barnard Produced by Sarah Barnard & Sofiya Fateeva Wathaurong Country Deakin University Victoria, Australia

Episodes

  1. 30/05/2022

    S2E3 Rethinking Mental Health with A/Prof Ajeet Singh

    “Muscle burn, not muscle rip” Associate Professor Ajeet Singh MD, PhD is an academic psychiatrist in Geelong who specialises in high functioning breakdowns in people in demanding careers like medicine and law. In this episode, Dr Singh offers a nuanced perspective the tension between stress, growth and building stamina, and maintaining your mental health as high achievers. It's a refreshing take on an important and topical issue in medicine.  We cover: 🏥 Mental health vs mental illness: what’s the difference and why does it matter? 🎓 Why are rates of depression, anxiety and suicide higher in medical practitioners and students than in the general population? ⛑ Are there certain traits in those who pursue high stress, high functioning demanding jobs like medicine that make us uniquely vulnerable to mental health issues? 🤯 Pushing your limits & respecting your limits: appreciating the tension between growth and overwhelm, and the tricky path to learn what’s right for you. 💊 Tips on ways to avoid internalising that pleb medical student life of feeling like a constant burden on the wards. 🚑 Best way to seek help when you're struggling & types of therapy that may helpful for smart cookies. 🐳 Legal stuff: Is my mental health condition reportable to AHPRA? What will happen to my career if the medical board find out? DM us on instagram or facebook (@growingpains_MD) if you have any feedback or would like to get in touch with Dr Singh!

    45 min
  2. 14/03/2022

    S2E2 Bearing Witness with Professor Peter Martin

    “Brevity and clarity requires skill and courage” This month we are sitting down with Professor Peter Martin and fellow 4th year medical student Bronte Warner to talk about bearing witness to suffering as we move through our training. Dr Martin is a professor of Communication and End of Life Care at Deakin University and a Palliative Care Physician at Barwon Health and offers his career’s work on how to look after yourselves and your patients as you inevitably will have to face suffering, death and mortality in your careers. We cover: Understanding ourselves ⚫️ What it can be like when a patient you care about dies ⚪️ Feeling out of your depth when witnessing suffering and being part of end of life discussions ⚫️ How people die matters ⚪️ How to express empathy and compassion in a way that is helpful for your patients ⚫️ How to process it: finding your way to honour the experience, engage in reflective practice, and let it go so you don’t take it home Understanding our patients ⚪️ What matters to them when facing end of life care? ⚫️ The myriad of ways in which grief and complex grief can be expressed ⚪️ Asking patients about quality of life vs avoiding death at all costs? ⚫️ Prognostic discordance ⚪️ Using the words “death” and “dying” ⚫️ Do YOU have an Advanced Care Plan? RESOURCES Thantology: the book Dr Martin is referring to us out of print but see The Sociology of Death and Dying: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-handbook-of-sociology/sociology-of-death-and-dying/8AC56C3B3C0EB3F22774DD1447F2FF12 Reflective practice in healthcare: https://support.mips.com.au/home/ahpra-self-reflection-is-good-healthcare-practice Dr Michael Leiter’s work on burnout: https://mpleiter.com/author/mpleiter/ Shwartz Rounds: https://www.theschwartzcenter.org/programs/schwartz-rounds/ Professor Charlie Corke’s My Values Quiz: https://www.myvalues.org.au/ The Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement: https://www.grief.org.au/ Complex Grief: https://prolongedgrief.columbia.edu/professionals/complicated-grief-professionals/overview/ Death over dinner: https://palliativecare.org.au/story/palliative-matters-death-over-dinner-launched-in-australia/ Do doctors die differently?https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/06/413691959/knowing-how-doctors-die-can-change-end-of-life-discussions. Daniel D. Matlock, Traci E. Yamashita, Sung-Joon Min, Alexander K. Smith, Amy S. Kelley and Stacy M. Fischer. How U.S. Doctors Die: A Cohort Study of Healthcare Use at the End of Life. Journal of American Geriatrics Society, May 2016 DOI: 10.1111/jgs.14112

    1h 4m

About

Join us as we talk to fellow students and medical professionals about the challenges we may face navigating our personal and professional lives as future medics. Hosted by Sarah Barnard Produced by Sarah Barnard & Sofiya Fateeva Wathaurong Country Deakin University Victoria, Australia