Someone said that the secret to happiness is not in doing what you love, but in loving what you do. As doctors, we are in such privileged positions. We get to practice our art and help others along the way. As medical students, we fell in love with medicine.… Read more

‘Doctor’ comes from the Latin word ‘docere’, meaning ‘teacher’. ‘Surgery’ comes from the Latin ‘chirurgia’, or Greek ‘kheirourgia’, meaning ‘working with hands’.

I believe as a surgeon I am called to be a teacher who works with my hands.

The primary duty of a doctor/surgeon is to teach.… Read more

Throughout my training I’ve found that even the hardest bosses are really softies at heart. Some of the nastiest surgeons I’ve met turn out to be very reasonable and friendly mentors once you get to spend time with them. It’s just that they don’t let too many people come close to them and they demand perfection from everyone working with them.… Read more

Which is harder? Writing down the bad stuff you’ve done, or the good ones? Yesterday you wrote about the things that you could have done to improve your game. The wrongs that could have been made better. Today, write down the events in the past week where you have done well.… Read more

To err is human. Doctoring is human. If we are honest with ourselves, there will always be mistakes we can admit to and things we can do better. We are trained in this. As a trainee surgeon, in particular, I am trained to continually audit my performance.… Read more

Hospitals are pressure cookers. Working in hospitals involve dealing with pressures at all times: time pressures, clinical demands, urgent matters, sick patients, excessive workload, mounting paperwork, challenging procedures, etc. In the midst of high tension and pressure situations, egos get rubbed, tempers flare, and sharp, hurtful words get thrown about.… Read more

You are always running, probably. I know I used to. I used to always run between theatre, emergency, the ward, clinic, preoperative holding bay, recovery, etc. I need to run so I can pack more things into my day and spread myself thinly over many things.… Read more

Doctors never work alone. Patients are best served when doctors work well with allied health. I can easily list the allied health workers that ENTs work with very closely: nurses, pharmacists, audiologists, speech and language pathologists, physiotherapists, nutritionists, social workers. What about your specialty?… Read more

It takes an army of workers to make a hospital run. There are many, many unseen employees in every hospital working for the good of the patients. As doctors, we are often seen as the face of the hospital, but we know that we would not be able to work effectively without the help of so many others.… Read more

Do you have a dream? Have you got a picture of how your doctoring would look in the future? What kind of achievements? What superspecialty? What specific things you’d like to be remembered for? What your clinic would look like? What your hospital would look like?… Read more