The Mind Full Medic Podcast - Communication in crisis, the value of deep work, dealing with trauma and other lessons from the newsroom with Melissa Clarke.

Communication in crisis, the value of deep work, dealing with trauma and other lessons from the newsroom with Melissa Clarke.

09/18/21 • 122 min

1 Listener

In S2 E13 I am delighted to welcome Melissa Clarke to the podcast. Melissa is a political reporter with the ABC, working at Parliament House in Canberra. It’s a job she has had, with a few interludes, for more than a decade. She reports on politics, parliament and national affairs across a range of radio and television programs, as well as ABC digital news site. Melissa’s reporting experience spans beyond politics though, having been a foreign correspondent based at the ABC London bureau, reporting from Pacific nations, and reporting in-depth on issues including the environment, national security and justice - and the occasional bushfire. Away from the work, Melissa is a dedicated runner who has experienced a brief period of success at the high performance level, but has had a lifelong passion for running, endurance challenges and the great outdoors.
In this conversation we discuss and explore Melissa's work as a reporter and I draw some parallels with my own profession and day-to-day work in the emergency department, particularly with respect to the need to respond to ever-changing circumstances and crises.
As both doctor and amateur podcaster, I was keen to glean some tips from an expert on interview skills and communicating under pressure.
Indeed through this conversation I found some additional parallels but also broadened the lens and perspective through which I viewed her role and indeed modern media more generally.
Melissa is an avid reader and we explore how she navigates the need to read widely and consume all forms of media as part of her work with both a professional and personal yearning to cultivate deeper work and reading.
Naturally as fellow runner and lover of endurance pursuits and the outdoors, we discuss her why of adventure racing and how she cultivates time and space for self-care outside a job which could be 24/7, if she let it.

Links/ references:
Melissa Clarke
Twitter @Clarke_Melissa

Dart Center for Journalism an Trauma
https://dartcenter.org

Melissa's recommenced reads:
We Were Not Men Campbell Mattinson
https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713150/we-were-not-men/

Power without Glory Frank Hary
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/power-without-glory-9781741667615
Why Die? The extraordinary Percy Cerutty maker of champions
https://www.percy-cerutty.com

Sky Runner Emelie Forsberg
https://www.emelieforsberg.com

The Secret Race Tyler Hamilton
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-secret-race-9780552169172

What I talk about when I talk about running Haruki Murakami https://www.harukimurakami.com/book/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-running-a-memoir

Endure Alex Hutchison

The Mind Full Medic Podcast is proudly sponsored by the MBA NSW-ACT Find out more about their service or donate today at www.mbansw.org.au
Disclaimer: The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care professional. Moreover views expressed here are our own and do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or other official organisations.

Links/ references:
Melissa Clarke
Twitter @Clarke_Melissa

Dart Center for Journalism an Trauma
https://dartcenter.org

Melissa's recommenced reads:
We Were Not Men Campbell Mattinson
https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713150/we-were-not-men/

Power without Glory Frank Hary
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/power-without-glory-9781741667615
Why Die? The extraordinary Percy Cerutty maker of champions
https://www.percy-cerutty.com

Sky Runner Emelie Forsberg
https://www.emelieforsberg.com

The Secret Race Tyler Hamilton
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-secret-race-9780552169172

What I talk about when I talk about running Haruki Murakami https://www.harukimurakami.com/book/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-running-a-memoir

Endure Alex Hutchison

Previous Episode

What can doctors learn from athletes about training for performance with Dr Alice McNamara and Dr Charlotte Durand

In S2E12 I am delighted to welcome Dr Alice McNamara and Dr Charlotte Durand to the podcast.
Alice is sport and exercise medicine registrar in Melbourne, Australia. She is also a dual world champion rower with over a decade of experience on the Australian women’s rowing team. She qualified for the lightweight women’s double for the London Olympic Games and attended the Beijing games as an alternate.
(Full Bio in episode. )
Charlotte is an emergency registrar working in Darwin, NT. She is also a triathlete and competed for Australia in the 2018 ITU world triathlon finals. (Again full bio in episode.)
In this conversation we discuss their respective backgrounds and careers to date in both sport and medicine and use as a platform to explore the themes of optimising performance and supporting wellbeing for doctors ( and indeed anyone looking to do this in their life). Alice and Charlotte use their experiences in sport and apply the performance lens to their medical training. They cover periodisation, deliberate practice, visualisation, coaching and mentoring and setting boundaries and recovery goals, topics familiar to listeners to this podcast. We explore parallels, similarities and differences between the athlete and doctor-in-training experience. Alice explains the concepts of physiological overreaching and the pathological overtraining syndrome and we compare and contrast to the profession syndrome of burnout.
In the second half of the conversation Alice speaks about her research with the AIS exploring female athlete heath and we discuss the Relative Energy Deficit in Sport ( RED-S), introducing concepts of energy availability in both female and male athletes, elite and recreational. This leads on to a more general conversation about fuelling and hydration for shift work and attention to self care and basic needs at work in the clinical environment.
The central themes of performance and wellbeing weave through this entirely of this conversation and both Alice and Charlotte share valuable perspective including many pearls and takeaways from their considerable experience and expertise.
I learned a lot from this conversation and it is a joy to listen to Alice and Charlotte share their authentic lived experience of performing and integrating sport, work and life as both athletes and doctors with a medical and sports science and psychology framework.
References and links :
Dr Alice McNamara
https://twitter.com/alice_mac6
https://www.instagram.com/_alice_mac/
Australian Institute of Sport FPHI website :
:Female Performance & Health Initiative | Australian Institute of Sport
ais.gov.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/11/687.long
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33065594/
Dr Charlotte Durand
https://www.instagram.com/chardurand/
https://twitter.com/char_durand
https://www.acemprimarypodcast.com
Ted Lasso and #medlasso Dr Mark Shapiro MD Into the Space Podcast

Disclaimer: The cont

Next Episode

Falling back in love with Emergency Medicine 2.0 with Dr Andrea Austin.

In S2 E14 I am delighted to welcome Dr Andrea Austin MD, FACEP, FAAEM, CHSE to the podcast. Dr Austin is an Emergency Physician and Simulation educator based in Southern California. She graduated medical school from the University of Iowa and completed her emergency medicine residency at Naval Medical Center San Diego ( NMCSD) Dr Austin was the first female emergency physician to be stationed at Navy Trauma Training Center ( NTTC) at LA County + USC, one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States. As the emergency medicine physician and simulation director at NTTC, she trained hundreds of military medical personnel in the latest trauma advances to prepare them to provide medical care in austere environments. In 2016 she deployed to Iraq as part of a Shock Trauma Platoon. Andrea will also be familiar to many listeners as the co-host of The Emergency Mind podcast with previous guest Dr Dan Dworkis. Her voice has kept me and many anchored through this challenging time. Her most recent endeavour the Revitalize Women Physician Circle combines her experience with executive coaching, mentoring and leadership development.
Dr Austin makes active, meaningful contributions to a number of key areas of medical practice including medical simulation education and training, military medicine, veterans’ health, equity in medicine and female leadership, mentoring and advancing physician and healthcare worker wellbeing conversations and strategy.
In this conversation Andrea allows me to explore her professional and personal journey wearing these hats. This conversation spans simulation as teaching tool, female leadership, coaching and mentoring through finding her voice as a podcast host. Specifically, she reflects on her own experiences of career burnout, the role coaching has played in helping her to determine and align her values in the workplace to ultimately cultivate sustainable career satisfaction. Regular listeners will be familiar with many of the themes we discuss and Andrea gives truly valuable perspective.
Andrea first introduced me to Ted Lasso and the #Medlasso movement inspired by Dr Mark Shapiro from the Explore the Space Podcast and no discussion of leadership and team culture would be complete without some #medlasso critique!
Contact /Links/References:
Dr Andrea Austin
https://www.andreaaustinmd.com
https://twitter.com/EMSimGal
Revitalize Women Physician Circle
https://www.peoplealwayshcc.com/revitalize
Podcasts
https://www.emergencymind.com/podcast
https://feminem.org/women-in-medicine/
https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(17)30059-8/fulltext
https://www.susandavid.com/about-emotional-agility
https://www.explorethespaceshow.com
Disclaimer: The content in this podcast is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advi