What is your role at FX Medicine? To bring the information that we are flooded with in Integrative Medicine back to relevance in clinical practice. The only significant question is, "How does this help me help my patients?" And to help invent a HEALTHCARE system in Australia, bringing Integrative Medicine and preventive healthcare into the mainstream.
What is your background? I was trained in Medicine at Sydney University, graduated in 1980, and did my hardcore hospital training for three more years. I opened my General Practice on the Central Coast of NSW in 1983, and found that the patients nearby who were exposed to farm chemicals did not fit any of the disease categories I had learned. Over the next 32 years, my patients dragged me kicking and screaming into what have been termed "Medically Unexplained Illness" - chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, and individual susceptibilities. I was trained and became a fellow of the Australian Society of Environmental Medicine ((ASEM - now defunct), the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM) and in 1995 I headed up the Australian Comprehensive Medicine Association (ACMA) which since morphed into The Australasian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA).
What does being at FX Medicine mean to you? It provides me an opportunity to share my experience, research and clinical knowledges with a broad range of diverse practitioners, and to add my voice to the conversation that is inventing the future of healthcare here in Australia.
Favourite movie… No brainer. Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. I've seen it dozens of times. Of recent movies, I LOVED Mad Max: Fury Road. Totally surprised me
At the moment I am reading… Norman Doige’s new book, The Brain’s Way of Healing. Remarkable stories that jibe with my own experience of the ability of my patients to repair and recover from trauma and injury that no one believes can recover.
Favourite quote... Time wounds all heels.
When I was young I wanted to be a… An astronomer. Then a computer programmer. Then a professional photographer. Medicine was way down the list.
A little known fact about me is… I come from a long line of Irish Catholic publicans, priests and horse trainers. I’m the black sheep.
My favourite way to relax is… Walk a long, long way led by my 7 year old pooch, Mr Digby. He takes me a different way each day, and has dropped me 27 kg so far. His work is half done, he tells me. In the good old days a few decades back, it was surfing. The rhythm of the waves is the breath of yoga. I miss surfing. But Digby cannot surf.