Thank you, 2018 :)

It’s strange sitting here, 1.5 hours before midnight in my home city, 2.5 hours til 2019 in my current one.

But it’s a great time for reflection, particularly when you and your other half saw the Early fireworks as he’s oncall tonight.

2018 was a huge year for me.

One of my faves, Ariana Grande herself said it best- “I find it interesting that this has been one of the best years of my career and the worst of my life.”

I guess personally, it wasn’t the absolute worst it could have been for me, but it definitely had a huge amount of challenges that really rocked me- but also gave me the extraordinary chance to reset and reframe the difficult situations in my personal life.

You can dread each day and its challenges, or you can reframe it to be uplifting for someone else who’s going through a hard time.

Every day counts.

I really believe that, no matter what challenges your career throws at you, you and your loved ones come first.

They’re your anchor, they’re your reason, your “Why” in most cases.

And you should never be ashamed of putting your wellbeing first.

Because no matter how big your career gets- and I believe that your career is your startup - you’ll enjoy it more when you respect yourself.

If you need more time before saying “Yes” to a project, ask for it.

If you feel pressured to work weekends and public holidays because that’s “the startup way,” but you’re actually more productive just working on odd weekdays, go ahead and set your boundaries.

If your personal circumstances mean it’s more favourable for yourself and your family if you work a bunch of part-time and casual freelance roles, go ahead and do it.

If you feel your co-founder’s doing something dodgy, reassess and consider trusting your instincts.

If someone’s being two-faced, don’t be afraid to call it out.

If you love doing several other things along with medicine, allow yourself to do it.

Give yourself permission.

And many more examples like this.

Everyone will be better off for you owning your power.

—-

Someone wise I met recently gave me that wonderful piece of advice.

“Own Your Power.”

Own your decision-making capability, your strengths and skills, your relationships, your identity.

People will try to take advantage of your vulnerability.

So-called “friends” and “partners” in startups and medicine will show their true colours to you, even when the rest of the world can’t see it immediately.

It’s disheartening. It can be isolating, and you can question yourself and your perception, wanting to believe you’re wrong.

It’s okay, because questions are healthy, and I’ve learnt how valuable it is to be mindful, and become more self-aware.

It’s a great defence mechanism, mindfulness. I’ve found it’s a great decision-making tool, productivity booster, and mental health balm. (Ooh, I should package that! Next to the lip balm jars!)

But I guess my rambling here right now is to say,

THANK YOU.

Thank you, 2018, for teaching me even through my weaknesses and dark times this year.

Thank you for giving me the chance to grow stronger.

Thank you for helping me to speak my truth.

Thank you to every single one of you who stumbles across my page; who reads my articles from way back when; who follows and likes (for real) my stuff on social media; who has become a true friend from this crazy journey; who has bumped into me at some event or clinic somewhere around the world and said hello; who believes in me even when I don’t; who believed in me even when it doesn’t all make sense.

I can’t wait to share 2019 with you all.

Have a wonderful New Year and enjoy the celebrations :):):)

*I think I am serious about the mental health balm!

Creative Spotlight: Dr Vyom Sharma, General Practitioner and Magician

Dr Vyom Sharma is an Australian GP (Family Medicine/Primary Care Physician) and professional magician. He and his friends Luke Hocking and Alex de la Rambelje perform internationally as The Gentlemen of Deceit. From playing phone tricks on Kelly Osbourne on Australia’s Got Talent, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to events in Taiwan, Vyom juggles his magic work with his passion for General Practice. A graduate of Monash University, Vyom also speaks at events, including previous Australian Medical Association student conventions.

We sat down with Vyom prior to his recent Melbourne and current Sydney shows with The Gentlemen of Deceit, to learn about his journey. Tickets for the Sydney Opera House shows are still available here.

“I started in my first year of medical school. A fellow med student, Rob, was good at sleight of hand, so I started learning from him. The first three years were a period of intense learning, and doing 5-10 minute spots on stage.

The Gentlemen of Deceit performing one of their tricks. L-R: Alex de la Rambelje, Vyom Sharma, Luke Hocking. Pic courtesy of Dr Vyom Sharma

The hardest thing was doing it by myself. Medicine is difficult, but others are there too, and generate camaraderie during the course.

Whereas with Creative pursuits, your own path is incredibly unique. However, Melbourne has a very tight-knit Magic community. 

I started working as a magician in restaurants. It was a good example of being thrown in the deep end! Years of rehearsal couldn’t have given me that experience. Then I got accepted into the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

You need the experience before doing the work.

We walked in as boys, and out as men. Then that led to my biggest challenge: producing my own standalone show, Seven Stories. I didn’t have a lot of time, so I took some bold, unconventional steps to get it ready.

Coming to magic late, you find you’re more willing to take risks, and I’m up for more challenges as a result.

There’s a solid chance of failure, but what matters is to fight your ego, and realise how badly you don’t want to fail.

Medicine is a very risk-averse profession. You’re looking at longterm goals while working your day-to-day. With Magic, there’s a very fine line between success and failure. There’s the risk of incredibly public humiliation in an instant.

Performing on stage helps you realise the disparity between how you view failure and what it actually feels like.

It’s very interesting to switch between one perspective of failure in Medicine and another in Performance. I think Medicine should teach that your decisions are only as good as the information you have available at the time. A lot of people in Medicine look back and regret. But we are far more in control (of our decisions and pathways) than we realise.

In Medicine, people tend to praise the success, not the attempt. 

It’s like success is an algorithm, not about putting yourself out there (and giving it a go). This is the benefit of having an outside pursuit. 

The Gentlemen of Deceit on Australia’s Got Talent. Pic courtesy of Dr Sharma

Being a magician has helped me be a better doctor. It helps with building rapport. And it’s hard to feel sorry for yourself at a show when you’re looking after someone in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) the next day.

I really enjoy listening to people.

And I enjoy being a GP. It’s a specialty which encompasses a bit of everything.”

The Gentlemen of Deceit are playing at the Sydney Opera House tonight (October 16th). Tickets are still available here. 

Interview with Dr Gregory Sam, Psychiatrist and Director of Conduit Health: Part 1

First published April 26, 2016

 Dr Gregory Sam is a consultant psychiatrist who founded Australia’s first bulk-billing telehealth psychiatry consulting service, Conduit Health, in 2014. Focusing particularly on rural and remote communities, Greg currently runs Conduit Health along with his private practice work in the city. In this three-part interview series, Greg kindly shared his tips for success, the road to Conduit Health, mixing business with medicine, and rising from failure.

Image credit: Dr Gregory Sam

How did you get the idea for Conduit Health?

I think the idea started during my rural rotation of training in 2009. It was often a whole-day affair to see these clients, 4-5 hours’ trip each way, and that was disheartening to see people suffer so much. It’s supposed to be easy access. But they had to wait ages before seeing a psychiatrist.

So I aimed to fill that gap.

I started because I was so frustrated at the way things were.

I found so many deficiencies in rural mental health care, and thought, how do I improve things? There area lot of difficulties and shortcomings in the system. I was always into tech stuff. So I tried to think of the amalgamation of the healthcare and mental health care sectors. Telehealth was in its infancy then. So I thought, why can’t we assess the patient through telehealth conferencing?

I struggled to get through my exams, failed 3 or 4 times, and started to get a bit disillusioned about my career in general. I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t getting through. A lot of thoughts were going through my head. Is this the life for me? Should I be changing careers? A whole heap of stuff. But I thought, there’s still good things I can do in this field, whether it’s as a registrar or consultant or not. I’ve learnt a whole heap about my specialty through this. 

How long did it take you from having the idea to taking action, alongside your clinical work and studies?

Honestly, a few years. My idea has been since 2009, and it’s very tempting to get distracted by training. I was so focused on training that all these other things I could do fell by the wayside. I had the idea for a few years, but only started something solid in 2014.

I think 2014 was when overcoming all the inertia of starting a business occurred, planning and actually doing things. 

Failing my exams gave me that opportunity to start thinking outside the box. I took 3 months off work to have a break. I think that’s the best thing I did during training. I focused on badminton and other things I like doing, and started to make moves on my company. I had meetings with colleagues and friends in business, picked their brains, tried to absorb as much as I could from them, both guys and girls, to understand what it’s like to get into business. My business friends said, “it sounds like a brilliant idea, why don’t you do something about it?” So that gave me a kick to start.

When I went back to work, I left business for awhile and focused on passing exams. Once I passed, during our year of Advanced Training, I set learning goals on things like, “I want to learn more about drug and alcohol,” and other goals which I did in my day job, and also focused my energy on Conduit Health. That’s when the wheels started turning.

2015 was the launch date. Our first consult was February 2015, so 2015 has been a big year in that it’s a startup, and for most startups it’s about sustaining that growth, so 2016 is another big year. A lot of planning happens with regards to how to continue that growth, otherwise it’s too tempting to have a firework effect where it starts then fizzles up. 

Overcoming inertia is hard, but once you overcome it, things start rolling, and you can’t stop.  It’s a lot of commitment but so rewarding, more rewarding than my day job. I find treating patients rewarding, I can help them and their families as a psychiatrist. Whereas with Conduit Health, I’m helping so many more people across the country. We’ve had referrals from far and wide, from every state, and remote locations like the Kimberley and the Great Barrier Reef. I’m working with primary health networks (PHNs) across the country to expand our reach. 

How does a typical consult run?

Conduit Health, Telepsychiatry Service. Photo courtesy of Dr Gregory Sam.

Either the psychiatrist dials in (from their location), or the patient (who’s hosted at their GP clinic) dials into us, then the psychiatrist introduces the consult. We need to say at the start that we’re doing it via teleconferencing, that there’s no one else in the office, and check who’s in the office. This sets the scene so the patient can understand that there are no unseen people in the room. We discuss confidentiality, unless risks in which case we need to notify particular people. It’ll go between five minutes to an hour, we state our aims, then start the diagnostic interview.

The video quality is quite good, but if there’s any lag or dropout, we disconnect and call back. We check at the start, “can you see me? Can you hear me?” We check camera position so the webcam points directly at the patient and so the patient can see us. We also make sure it’s appropriate, eg. the psychiatrist is in a quiet isolated room, not at the beach. We set rules for our psychiatrists. They use the Conduit Health backdrop. 

Sometimes a mental health care nurse will be there. We offer to GPs, if you want to be present for the whole assessment or in the last 5-10 minutes, you can. Some GPs stay for the whole interview, others come in the last 5 minutes and ask the psychiatrist, “what’s your diagnostic impression and what’s your plan?” They can get immediate feedback, (and sometimes help with scripts and so on).

We also get constant feedback from other GPs. My role is partly to ask patients and GPs, “how are you finding the process? Can we make things better for you?” Constantly evolving the company.

One benefit of Conduit is confidentiality. You don’t need to go into a psychiatric facility where everyone knows it’s a psychiatry facility, and sit in a waiting room with other mentally ill patients. Patients have said that’s a benefit, so people don’t have to know they’re seeing a psychiatrist. In a way that’s also bad. We’re not trying to promote stigma of mental health, but unfortunately this is a barrier to receiving care.

How did the name Conduit come about?

I was building a house at the time, and working with the builders, one said, “I want to dig a tunnel under your garden to create a conduit for your electrical wires to go through.” Also from my cardiothoracic surgical rotation in med school, “they harvest the conduit” in bypass surgery, and they explained what a conduit was to me. I then thought about what Conduit Health does, it takes away big distances and gaps.

The logo is a bridge, to embody bridging gaps.Suddenly, 300 kilometres to go to an appointment doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a link, a conduit, from point A to B. So patients don’t have to travel.

I don’t think telehealth will replace traditional face consults, but it can address geographical barriers.

Would you expand Conduit to non-psychiatry services?

The immediate next need would be psychology. It would be great to have psychologists who can do tests and consults. But at the start, I want to focus on psychiatry. Some companies have one of every specialty, but I want to focus (for now). If there is demand later on, for say, neuropsychology, social work, we will expand to fill the need.

What about your plans for aged care?

A big arm we’re developing in 2016 is to work with residential aged care facilities. There’s such a huge need, patients can’t often go see a psychiatrist. Aged care services are often floundering, “can we get the psychiatrist to come here?” but not many psychiatrists want to do that to see one or two patients, it’s not feasible. But we can go in and have a session there, and it’s immediate. So 2016 will be a big year for Conduit Health Aged Care branch. We want to expand to all the big aged care facilities. 

To learn more about Conduit Health, click here. 

Stay tuned for Parts II and III of Greg’s interview, in which he discusses his business inspirations, his insights on failure, and running a business as a medical professional.