DECEMBER 2019 ANZCA BULLETIN Research grants: $A1.66 million funds projects Doctors’ welfare: Memorial fund goes global Working towards rural pathways Environmental sustainability 50 ANZCA’s new working group is driving change. Contents 4 President’s message 50 Environmental sustainability working 6 Chief executive officer’s message group 7 Letters 52 Faculty of Pain Medicine news 8 Awards 58 ANZCA's Indigenous health strategy update 10 ANZCA and FPM in the news 62 How you celebrated National Fund-A-Fellow program Indigenous health 12 ANZCA and government: Building Overview of Māori recognition and other initiatives. Anaesthesia Day How the death of a much-loved WA anaesthetist is relationships helping others in low- to middle-income countries. 65 SIG meeting gives perioperative medicine 14 ANZCA’s professional documents: 22 58 work a boost What would you do? 66 What's new in the library? 16 New ANZCA website coming soon 70 Doctors' health and wellbeing and our Regional and rural health 18 Beyond city limits: Working where the trainees...where are we up to? Meet the fellows and trainees who live and grass is greener work outside the big cities. 71 ANZCA Research Foundation update 22 Fund-A-Fellow program: A legacy lives on 18 76 Education news 26 Safety and quality news 80 Successful candidates 28 ANZCA Clinical Trials Network news 84 Anaesthetic history 30 Research grant success rate jumps for 2020 86 Special interest group events 46 ANZCA research helps guide patient 92 New Zealand news clinical care 95 Australian news 48 CPD update 103 Obituaries ANZCA Bulletin Submitting letters and other Copyright The Australian and New Zealand material ANZCA may promote articles that College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) We encourage the submission appear in the Bulletin in other forums is the professional medical body of letters, news and feature stories. such as the ANZCA website and in Australia and New Zealand that Please contact ANZCA Bulletin Editor, ANZCA social media platforms. conducts education, training and Clea Hincks at Copyright © 2019 by the Australian continuing professional development [email protected] if you would and New Zealand College of of anaesthetists and specialist like to contribute. Letters should be Anaesthetists, all rights reserved. pain medicine physicians. ANZCA no more than 300 words and must None of the contents of this comprises about 7500 fellows and contain your full name, address and a publication may be reproduced, 1700 trainees mainly in Australia daytime telephone number. They may stored in a retrieval system or and New Zealand. It serves the be edited for clarity and length. transmitted in any form, by any community by upholding the highest means without the prior written standards of patient safety. Advertising inquiries permission of the publisher. ANZCA research To advertise in the ANZCA Professor David Story examines ANZCA Medical editor Please note that any views or Dr Nigel Robertson Bulletin please contact clinical trials and evidence. [email protected]. opinions expressed in this publication Editor are solely those of the author and 30 Clea Hincks Contacts do not necessarily represent those Production editor ANZCA of ANZCA. Website changes Liane Reynolds 630 St Kilda Road, Melbourne ISSN: The new college website Features writer Victoria 3004, Australia 1038-0981 (print) and branding will be Carolyn Jones +61 3 9510 6299 2206-5423 (online) launched soon. [email protected] 16 Advertising manager www.anzca.edu.au Vivienne Forbes Faculty of Pain Medicine Cover photograph: +61 3 8517 5337 Penny Stephens [email protected] www.fpm.anzca.edu.au 4 ANZCA Bulletin March 2019 3 President’s message These interactions define us individually "So, while it’s good to be seen that our values and ethics are defined Finally, I believe that the community as professionals, and collectively as a in the eyes of the community and our perception of who we are benefits if we profession. How you decide to present to be cool (or so I’m told), let’s colleagues by our actions and words. This are seen to represent the diversity of the yourself affects how I will be perceived, continue to strive to be more." includes making public comment not only broader community. and vice versa. A hospital intern recently on issues directly related to our speciality To this end diversity remains important. effused that anaesthetists are “so cool”, of anaesthesia, pain medicine and Happily we have moved well past the days and whenever we appear at a time of crisis At times the first impression unwittingly perioperative medicine, but also to having when our profession was predominantly a sense of order and calm is immediately occurs before our first direct interaction. the confidence to advocate on broader Caucasian males, and today the popular bestowed. I can think of worse things I have been surprised at the number of community health issues. image of an anaesthetist/specialist than being perceived as “so cool”, but I complaints I have received from patients Our efforts to progress the subspecialty pain medicine physician is just as likely feel we want to be more than that. stating their dismay that their first contact of perioperative medicine is driven by to be that of a woman. However there with the anaesthesia service has been a What do we wish to be seen to stand for? recognition that with intraoperative is still much to be done to improve text message, asking for payment before Professionalism, in its most inclusive mortality being vanishingly rare, but representation of the broader community. (the word “before” seems to usually be sense, seems to me to be a good start. 30-day mortality being 1000 times higher, Indigenous Australians represent 3 in upper case) a certain date. Surely that we simply must foster a more holistic per cent of our population but 0.04 per Some years ago the Royal Australasian first interaction provides an opportunity model of operative care if we are to cent of our workforce, and I have yet to College of Surgeons conducted a large- to establish that our foremost concern improve patient outcomes. Our efforts as personally meet a colleague wearing scale community survey, seeking the confirms our professionalism, and perioperative physicians also implicitly a hijab, or from Sub-Saharan Africa. I most important qualities looked for in a relates to clinical and personal issues. convey the message that we are more would argue that it is time to reconsider surgeon. Interestingly, top of the list was Surely financial issues (including than doctors who simply “put people to the concept of “merit” during our trainee “ethics”. No doubt clinical capability acknowledgement that any angst can be sleep”. Rather, we are defining ourselves selection processes, and to give greater is critical, but evidence of an ethical sensitively addressed) can still be alluded as specialist medical practitioners whose recognition to how cultural diversity character accords with my personal to as part of that initial contact, but not as focus of attention and expertise extends enriches our workforce. Other colleges are perception that most of all patients want our apparent first priority. well before and beyond the period of already doing so. to feel they can trust that their doctor has I remain convinced that we do well to (unremembered) unconsciousness. their interests foremost in our minds. Of So, while it’s good to be seen to be cool (or so promote the fact that while we obviously course patients value clinical competence And of course we are the specialty that I’m told), let’s continue to strive to be more. perceive ourselves as specialist medical extremely highly, but seemingly often wishes to remain closely associated practitioners with specific and important Go well. Enjoy your Christmas and New take it for granted, and therefore become with pain medicine, retrieval medicine, We are in the fortunate position of expertise, we also accept and embrace the Year. particularly engaged with our capacity diving and hyperbaric medicine, cave being able to determine how our broader responsibilities and privileges for compassion and communication. rescues (thanks Harry) and intensive care that doctors in general are accorded in our Dr Rod Mitchell profession is perceived, and we do (Competence, compassion and medicine. community. Furthermore I would argue ANZCA President so in our everyday interactions with communication. Are these the three our patients, our colleagues, and “coms” we need to convey?) the wider community. To this end, there are seemingly a number of issues we need to consider and I am initially going to borrow from Dr Allan Cyna’s 2019 Kester Brown Lecture at this year’s Australian Society of Anaesthetists’ National Scientific Congress. If first impressions are important and enduring, Allan suggests that simple things like asking patients at the commencement of the consultation what they prefer to be called is a good start. Similarly, asking patients if they have particular concerns and/or questions is a very simple but powerful message that we are considering them as an individual with concomitant individual needs. 4 ANZCA Bulletin December 2019 5 Chief executive Letters Principles officer’s message statement In 2000 I undertook executive leadership It has been fascinating to hear about Another cancer patient ANZCA is regularly asked to make studies in the US, attending the Wharton ANZCA’s role in leading the development experience statements or support causes not directly School of Business at the University of a qualification in perioperative Dr Mark Awerbuch’s account related to anaesthesia or pain medicine. of Philadelphia, and in 2016 attended medicine. In November I attended the of his experiences seeking out Requests come from government Harvard Business School in Boston Perioperative Medicine Special Interest expert opinion, and, ultimately, departments, other medical colleges, having also previously attended the Group meeting in Brisbane where I could management of his acute T-cell health or educational organisations, and Beckwith Institute in Pittsburgh see first-hand the significant amount of lymphoblastic leukaemia, is at once the media.