Tash Miles hits the open road to hear the student perspective on healthcare in rural and remote communities. We meet podiatry student Hayley Johns, medical student Harry Gaffney and medical student and pharmacist Debra Lee. We hear about the unique opportunities presented when living and working in outside of metropolitan centres.

In this episode, host Susan Biggar talks with two women in surgery, vascular surgeon, Dr Pecky De Silva, and breast, endocrine and general surgeon, Dr Christine Lai. Pecky and Christine share their training paths and some of the barriers and assumptions they’ve encountered as they have progressed through their careers. They talk about the support they received within the profession and how having greater female representation amongst surgeons is important for patient safety and better outcomes.

In this episode, host Susan Biggar talks with two women in surgery, Dr Victoria Atkinson, cardiac surgeon and Chief Medical Officer of Healthscope and Dr Vera Sallen, orthopaedic surgeon. Victoria and Vera tell us their stories of becoming surgeons, successes they see around them as well as frustrations they still feel. They tell us about the feeling when they look around the theatre and they are surrounded by women, what it felt like to progress through their careers as female surgeons and the pros and cons of quotas in their workplace.

In this episode we are talking about leadership: what it’s like to be a leader and a health practitioner, what the journey to leadership might look like and how to best lead other practitioners. Professor Catherine Stoddart and Jeff Moffett reflect on how training as a health practitioner has equipped them to be better leaders, the similarities and the differences between clinical care and being the leader of a large health system.

In this episode of Taking care, host Susan Biggar speaks to an impressive leader and advocate for those living with mental health issues, Maggie Toko. Maggie has led VMIAC, Victoria’s peak organisation for people with a lived experience of mental health problems or emotional distress for nearly two decades.

Host Tash Miles talks with Dr Linda Mellors, CEO and Managing Director, Regis Aged Care, Dr Joseph Ibrahim, Geriatrician, Monash University and Allyson Warrington, CEO Community Based Support and community member of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. They discuss topics including what aged care looks like now, how it is changing and what should we be hoping for.

Today, we hear from Dr Anna van der Gaag, visiting Professor in Ethics and Regulation and member of the International Ethics Observatory team at University of Surrey UK and former Chair of the Health and Care Professions Council and Emeritus Professor Valerie Braithwaite, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University. Our guests join host Susan Biggar to discuss kindness across the healthcare spectrum, from regulatory strategies and leadership techniques to compassion in workplaces. Reflecting on the movement in healthcare in recent years towards an emphasis on kindness in the workplace for health practitioners, in this episode we take a look upstream to what is the role of kindness in how our health professions are regulated, and what that means for our communities.

What does safe and accessible healthcare look like? In this episode, Tash Miles welcomes Hamza Vayani, Board Director of the World Wellness Group and member of Ahpra’s Community Reference Group, and Darlene Cox, Executive Director of Health Care Consumers’ Association Incorporated. They explore what access could look like for all communities, and some of the barriers for people achieving it.

Today, we hear from Dr Gerald Hickson, the founder of the Vanderbilt Centre for Patient and Professional Advocacy. Jerry talks with host Tash Miles about professionalism in the healthcare context. Professionalism is key to keeping patients and practitioners safe and effective, and a crisis magnifies this need to pursue professionalism. Hear Jerry’s insights on how health practitioners and leaders prepare for a crisis, how practice has changed in this current crisis, and how this keeps their patients safe.

A conversation with Adjunct Clinical Professor Brett Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, and Dr Jeannette Young, Queensland’s Chief Health Officer the challenges they’ve faced during the pandemic, what has been rewarding and their unexpected celebrity status.