For Barwon Health intern Dr Pasqualina Coffey, becoming a successful doctor is all about work-life balance while keeping abreast of knowledge and skills.
Dr Coffey enjoys the frenetic pace that comes with her emergency department rotation at GeelongHospital so it was important to synchronise the various equilibriums, but she found the secret closer to home than she thought.
She joined AMA Victoria's Doctors in Training (DiT) subdivision: a group of junior doctors who meet once a month to represent the interests of their peers to the medical profession and beyond.
These forums allow interns, HMOs and residents to bring up concerns and advocate for improvements in Victoria's public hospitals.
Dr Coffey is nearing the end of her GeelongHospital emergency rotation which followed a stint at The McKellar Centre, Barwon Health's sub-acute facility.
She says her six years of study helped her prepare for medical practice but as a doctor you never stop learning. "There's a whole new vocabulary, new pressures, challenges, problems and decisions you have to make,'' she says.
Dr Coffey says the peer group meetings help her to get the balance right between work and home as well as make a difference outside of work.
"Joining AMA was always a given for me,'' says Dr Coffey. "It's so important to be both an advocate for your profession and an advocate for your patients. The AMA is definitely the best vehicle to achieve that.''
Importantly, the subdivision has a strong focus on networking and social opportunities for junior doctors. The group's events provide a forum for much-needed debriefing after long, stressful days at work.
Looking beyond the day-to-day work of junior doctors is also important for the DiT subdivision. To connect doctors with the outside world, it puts junior doctors in touch with opportunities to volunteer their medical skills to help those in need.
Dr Coffey says choosing a medical career path can be overwhelming: "There are a lot of myths out there and pressure to rush into specialisations early on. The DiT subdivision's Careers' seminars and 'Mythbusters' sessions talk through all the myths and provide much-needed clarity for junior doctors planning their career paths.''
While Dr Coffey does not want to rule out any field of medicine before she has tried it, the flexibility of GP training and the ability to build relationships with patients appeals to her.
