An honour and a privilege

An honour and a privilege

After two years at the helm of AMA (NSW), I am leaving my post incredibly humbled to represent the medical professionals in NSW who have collectively made our State’s health system among the best in the world.

It is with mixed emotions that I write my last column for this magazine. How quickly the past two years have flown, and what a time to be in medical leadership. It brought me immense pride to be given the opportunity to represent our profession throughout this crisis.

I presume that this is normally the time a president would trawl through old notes and emails from the past two years to remind themselves what the big issues were. That part of my job is easier – we had one issue on repeat. Over and over, COVID seems to have dominated our lives at work and at home. 

At AMA (NSW) we have achieved a lot and yet it seems like there is so much still to do. We fought hard for reporting key COVID metrics, PPE supplies, funding of telehealth and the importance of public health measures. Now, we are reminding Governments that all the money they’ve thrown at “health” recently was really thrown at COVID, not the health system. This pandemic has taken much of our attention, and it’s time now to make sure that while we continue to keep COVID-safe, we also get some focus back on the other big issues in medicine.

While I didn’t get to meet as many of you in person as I’d hoped, some highlights of the term were visits to the South Coast and North Coast to meet members and hear firsthand about the challenges of rural and regional medicine. At the time of writing, the parliamentary inquiry into rural and regional health is scheduled to deliver its final report on 5 May. And we will be there to ensure the outcomes from this inquiry support and strengthen the fantastic doctors we have across regional NSW.

Another major focus for the AMA, and one that is brought into sharp relief given the back-to-back climate disasters we’ve faced in recent years, is climate change.

We know we have some members who think climate change isn’t our wheelhouse, but the effects on health are enormous. The direct impact of things like bushfire smoke on asthmatics, heatstroke on the elderly, and localised infectious disease outbreaks with flood waters. But more broadly the mental health impacts of increasing environmental volatility – the distress of those who have lost everything and fear losing it again. This includes some of our colleagues who have lost not only their homes but also their practices.

The health profession needs to lead by example. There is much we can improve at a local level in our health system to reduce our environmental impact and make our profession sustainable. 

There remain many challenges in health – true reform of our primary healthcare system, strengthening private health, and adequately supporting our public hospitals. Demand just keeps going up and up, and our workforce is tired. That’s not a great combination and we can’t afford to just keep dealing with demand by making our workforce work harder. We need to work smarter.

The AMA has some great ideas about how to step towards that, and I know many of you will have even more ideas. So please, keep listening, get involved, contribute, and let’s work together to support the profession.

Thank you to all our dedicated staff, who really do the work of the AMA. In particular, thanks to our CEO Fiona Davies, whose savvy insight helps steer the organisation and manage the multiple stakeholders in health for the betterment of the profession. Also, thanks to our communications team who have managed the many media calls. To our Board and Council who have been enormously helpful in providing support and expertise as we navigated policy-on-the-run for the past two years – your support and guidance has been enormously valuable. To our members, for supporting the AMA so that doctors of all specialties and all stages of career can have a voice – thank you. And lastly, the biggest thanks go to YOU, for the work you do for our patients every day.

Stay safe and look out for each other.