Bringer of soap & water. Fixer of limbs. 🇨🇦 🇦🇺 Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon, mum, wife, award-winning kids author, persistent leader, MBA student.
Mar 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I see some of you docs out there with no learned boundaries; you take everything on; you fail to calculate the time commitment required. You don’t like saying “no” to people. So you suffer; you pay for it. I have been there. 1/
In medicine we are trained to say yes - to every research project, extra call shift, speaking request, ethics proposal, quality improvement project. We expect our trainees to have zero personal boundaries through training and then we wonder why they have none when they come out2/
Dec 6, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
As a physician involved in this process since 2017, the responses of health authorities to this noose in Alberta remains the biggest disappointment of my 20-year career in Medicine to date. 1/
After exhausting every possible accountability mechanism over years, it took a media report in 2020 by @jennierussell_ & @charlesrusnell to force accountability; there are woefully inadequate accountability mechanisms in 🇨🇦healthcare, for healthcare workers and patients 2/
May 12, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Today a brave medical student tried to insert an IV and almost fainted. He looked destroyed 😔
So I told him about the time in early med school when I fainted + pissed my pants while watching a knee aspiration - and was nicknamed “syncopeE” 😜
Four other students were present when it happened. They had a pact to keep it confidential but I went to school and told everyone; because that kind of thing, although embarrassing, is also damn funny.
Nov 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am seeing stats in Alberta with 86% of new cases having no known source. Once you have overwhelmed contact tracing capabilities, the horse has bolted from the barn. To pretend that a different end awaits Alberta is naive and dangerous.
At over 900 new cases per day, Alberta (pop 4.3mill) is already well past Melbourne (pop 4.9mill) at our peak (725 new daily cases). Melbourne was already locked down before this peak - because the contact tracing systems couldn’t keep up.
Jul 17, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Many questions coming my way from docs about #advocacy: when to speak up? how to pick your hill to die on?
In Medicine the status quo is programmed into us from the beginning: abide by the hierarchy, keep your head down
That culture doesn’t lead to system transformation 1/
Fear is a great driver for physicians - fear of what others will think, fear of exposing our imperfections, fear of making ourselves a target, fear of losing prestige or privilege, fear of lost income
Listening to courage, not fear, is how we change the system in medicine. 2/
