Growing Pains Sarah Barnard

It’s only a matter of time that as a medical student or doctor you will be confronted with the impacts of domestic and family violence on our patients and our communities. Whether it be treating a woman for injuries inflicted by her partner during your ED term or being the first person a woman speaks to about what is happening at home during your GP placement, knowing what to say and how to best to respond can be challenging. Though there are protocols and guidelines on what to do in these situations as a health professional, a better understanding of what constitutes domestic and family violence can help us better respond and support our patients in what is considered to be Australia’s hidden epidemic. Karen Prestidge is a Program Manager from Lifeline Community Recovery & Corporate Training skilled in delivering Domestic Violence Training programs with DV-alert. Karen is here to discuss the myths and misconceptions that continue to surround domestic and family violence, the cycle of abuse, and what to watch out for as a health professional. One not to miss! If you or someone you know is affected by this episode, please call 1800 RESPECT or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

“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!

“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

Out with labs, lectures and PBLs, and in with ward rounds, free coffees and probably COVID. Transitioning from preclinical into your clinical years is a big jump, and those first few weeks can be painfully overwhelming. But while the transition can be bumpy, you’ll definitely make it through and will be flabbergasted at how far you have come by the end of the year. 

To get you through those first few weeks, we have two of our seasoned Deakin fourth years, Yacoub Jayogli and Gaby Carty to bestow upon us all their lessons learned, insight and tales of terror as they made the leap into the big gun years. 

Lots of commiseration, giggles and advice on how to tackle:

🏥 Navigating the hospital environment

🩺 Reading the room folks

💉 Advocating for yourself

🏃🏾‍♀️ It's a marathon, not a sprint baby!

🥇 How to be the best (and least annoying) med student on the wards and in theatre

📚 How to study for exams and OSCEs after a year of clinical placement

This month Sofiya Fateeva, an incoming third year international student sits down with two recent Deakin grads Dr Melissa Ho and Dr Geo Zhou to talk about what life has been like as an international medical student at Deakin:

🎓  Dealing with failure, burnout and homesickness

🌎  Making friends and finding your people

💵  Job opportunities, intern applications and training programs as an international student

🩺  How to get the most out of your degree and seek out helpful feedback

🐨  Cultural and language differences studying in Australia (and trying to understand the Aussie sense of humour!)

✔️  Support available from the clinical schools and Deakin for international students

💉 The impact of the pandemic on their studies

This topic was too big and too important to not cover in more than one episode! This month, we sat down with Emma and Tie, two second year medical students at Deakin University to talk about how they manage studying medicine with having a family.

We talk about:

👩🏾‍🎓  How being a parent factored into their decision to start medicine later in life

🧬  Where there could be more support for parents in the medical degree

👩🏻‍⚕️  The joys and challenges

🩺  What they attribute to making it work for them

🧠  Differences in age and life stages when going back to uni when you're older

✍🏼  What they hope their little ones will learn from their pursuit to be doctor

As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback, and don't forget to rate us on Spotify or apple podcasts!