Varsity Lakes Doctors at Gold Coast Medical Precinct
At Gold Coast Medical Precinct our Varsity Lakes doctors strive to help all of our patients to our fullest ability.
Running a general practice is a diverse and complex, yet thoroughly rewarding, challenge.
Our responsibilities and duties go beyond our patients, extending to their families, relatives, friends, and the wider community.
It can become difficult to remember this while sitting within the four walls of a consulting room with just us and patients, but we must go beyond the call of our duty to be good and outstanding general practitioners within our community.
Studying medicine and the art of healing is demanding, fascinating and wonderful. For some of us, it is the only career we know. We take great pride in providing general practice services to our community. Some of us (especially those who practise in rural and remote Australia) shop, socialize, bump into, or go to church with our patients on a regular basis.
We meet you when you exist only as a bump in your mother’s stomach, we see you properly for the first time when you are born, and then we take you through your infancy, childhood and teenage years into a healthy balanced adulthood. We guide you through your adulthood and as you start your own family. We see you along your old age and final years. We attend your funeral to show you our respect and love. We support your family through the difficult and grieving times.
We finely develop an ability to connect with the person in the patient. A few of us then become outstanding GPs within our communities.
Communication with the patient is an important skill, though it is often a gift or natural talent, rather than an acquired skill. Some of us have never been taught an educational method and we are just brilliant because of our interpersonal style and communication skills – we listen, we are completely at ease with small silences, and we hold conversations that are simultaneously efficient and empathetic.
Pages: 1 2We include you in your management plans, we educate you, and we give you permission to look after yourself and understand your own diseases. In a general practice, we work in partnership with you.
Universities can teach us the interpersonal skills, but if we lack the intuition to understand their applicability in context and do not use our brain and work it out properly, all education is futile.
“Good judgment is based on experience. Experience is based on poor judgment. Shared experiences promote a certain wisdom and better judgment.”
– John Murtagh
