Women in Medicine address

My leadership journey started a long time ago, as a child, as I observed the women in my family create real change in our community.

I was born in El Salvador, a small and very beautiful country located in Central America, the skinny bit between North and South America. If you drink coffee you have probably had a blend from there. And of course found it delicious.

The Salvadorean people have suffered much, due to the disparity in how wealth is distributed. There is no middle class to speak of. There are the very rich who own most of the country’s wealth and the very poor who get by with a few dollars a week.

I assume you are all familiar with the film The Godfather? Well, my Grandmother would have given the Godfather a run for his money. She was a formidable woman – both a great lady and a leader in her community. We called her Tita, as she didn’t particularly warm to “Grandma”, being the young, vibrant person that she was.  She wasn’t part of the mafia and never had to shoot a weapon but she certainly had the power to have us do what she thought was best for us, no questions asked.

Luckily she used her powers for good and was involved in charitable work into her old age.

Tita would drive her Kombi van around the countryside delivering blankets and clothes to people in need, even in the middle of the Salvadorean civil war in the 1980s. One night she was driving along a deserted road, quite late in the night. She hit a pothole and got a flat tyre. She got out of her car and was looking at the tyre when a group of young men in camouflage gear carrying rifles stepped out from the jungle. She wasn’t sure whether they were army or terrorists. It didn’t really matter as both were equally dangerous.

Their leader asked what she was doing on a deserted road at night. She said she was driving to a village to deliver blankets. He asked if she was the ‘blanket lady’ who had started the blanket donation project in the surrounding villages. She said: “Yes, and that’s nice that you have heard about it, young man.”

He proceeded to tell her she should be more careful, as ‘it was very dangerous to drive at night and she was exposing herself to lots of risk!’ He also asked what protection she had? As in, bodyguards following her in another car?

Tita replied: “I don’t need bodyguards, God is protecting me.” The leader of the group was quiet for few seconds and then yelled orders to his men to change Tita’s tyre so she could be on her way, and to also check that the other tyres were ok.

My Tita came from a well-to-do family that owned coffee plantations and had a very comfortable life.  She was troubled by the social injustice and poverty around her and decided to do something to help.

My parents, too, were passionate about contributing to the community.

El Salvador was rocked by a large earthquake in 1986 – 100,000 people were left homeless and villages were cut off by road closures and mudslides.

My mother persuaded the British Consulate to donate approximately $10,000 US dollars to purchase basic items of clothing, warm blankets and first-aid medications, then organised our primary school and scouts club to pack hampers. My parents and their friends drove into areas that were near-unreachable.

My mother also organised for our school community to take in children from an orphanage that was destroyed in the earthquake until it could be rebuilt. The result was that many of the orphans were adopted by these families.

Sadly the civil war in El Salvador deteriorated greatly in the late 80s and my family made the brave decision to move to a safer place. We were accepted under a special humanitarian visa by Sweden, Canada and Australia. My mother chose Brisbane for its weather (thank goodness, as my sister and I hate the cold) and its educational opportunities.

So we made the journey not by boat but by a large Qantas jet to Brisbane, arriving on the 7th of March, 1990. Our Tita came with us, of course.

To be honest, our arrival was a little disappointing as I expected to see kangaroos jumping around everywhere and spent months looking for koalas on every tree with no success.

I was terrified on my first day of Grade 8 at All Hallows’. Here was I, a girl who had always been dropped off at the school gate by a private car, having to catch a bus and a train to school. In El Salvador there are no trains, and buses are scary! And children were abducted on their way to school.

But All Hallows’ was a great fit for me. Not only were the girls encouraged to study and strive for their dreams but they had a strong sense of social justice. Enough to keep my Tita happy.  

I achieved my career dreams by becoming a doctor, and my family dreams by becoming a wife and mother of two.

However, a few years ago, working as a GP for someone else, I felt that something was not quite right. For me, balance is not just about having a happy family and a fulfilling job but also about giving back to the community.

So in 2016 I decided to change it. I co-founded Family Doctors Plus with my business partner, Dr Fiona Raciti. We were both disillusioned with five-minute medicine and decided to open a clinic that strives for quality, where the doctors spend more time with the patients, where the focus is not just on treating disease but also on wellness and prevention.

We realised some new parents were suffering from isolation, so we started a parent and baby group. It’s a fantastic group. We invite speakers to share their thoughts about bonding, breastfeeding, pelvic floor exercises; the parents get some morning tea and get to meet others; and my staff and I get to hold babies for an hour. A win-win I’d say.

Running a business is challenging. We were not taught business skills in medical university. We realised quickly we had to upskill in business, marketing and human resources. I went from never having seen a business plan to being able to prepare and understand them and use them to make business decisions. One of my favourite sayings is if the numbers don’t sing don’t do it.

Family Doctors Plus won the 2017 Telstra Queensland Business of the Year Award. These are the most sought-after small business awards in Australia - 10,000 businesses nominated last year.

Early in our business journey, Fiona and I found it somewhat hard for people to take us seriously. Not only were we women in medicine, but we were just two doctors with no business experience. Winning the Telstra Award changed this. It gave us a platform to share our unique vision. Since then many more doors have opened for us which has allowed us to create some real change.

Healthcare in Australia is at risk. We all know that Medicare rebates are woeful and have not kept up with the cost of providing medical services. We all know that our hospitals are stretched beyond breaking point. That the reason why the system hasn’t collapsed is the altruism of doctors and healthcare workers. I am my mother’s daughter and my grandmother’s granddaughter, so I decided to become involved and work towards change. Fiona decided the same.

Initially we became involved in AMA with Dr Mellissa Naidoo encouraging us to join the AMA Queensland Council. She gave us no option really. When we said we were really busy as we had just started a new business, she did not take no for an answer. I also became involved with my state and Federal RACGP, the Australian GP Alliance and the Queensland Medical Women’s Society.

Medicine is one of the oldest professions. It is nimble and innovative in many ways - it changes constantly as new diagnostic tools and medicines are invented.

However, it is very backward when it comes to gender equality. A few years ago Fiona and I attended a medical conference. There were 500 people in the audience, half were women. There were six people on stage as panelists. Guess how many of those were women? Zero. And it did not go unnoticed. One of the women in the audience raised her hand during question time and said: “I note there are no women on the panel?”

The organiser said they had addressed this on the next day of the conference. This was true to some degree. Fiona and I were both on a panel the next day - two women, three men.

The next year I was asked to be part of the organising committee, and made it a point to include more women as speakers and panelists.

There are many theories as to why women do not put their hands up for leadership roles.

Annabel Crabb, in her book The Wife Drought, writes about a study performed by a large IT company after it noted that men are more likely to apply for a promotion than women. The researchers found that women put their hand up for a job only if they think they satisfy 100 per cent of the job criteria. Men are happy to do so even if they think they satisfy only 40 per cent of the criteria.

It’s time to put our hands up.

Everyone in this room has done wonderful things, and achieved fantastic goals.

Let’s hear about them, share your story with us.

Better still, get involved and become agents of change. The world needs more women in leadership positions to achieve a better balance. Look at the difference that my grandmother Tita made, with only a high school education.

Why not put your hand up and contribute to your representative organisations, colleges, school boards, business boards, not-for profit boards and beyond?

And encourage your daughters and sons (I have one of each) to become agents of change and participate in leadership positions at school, sports and music clubs and beyond. Remember, they will be the architects of balance in the future. 

As Michelle Obama said:

“There is no limit to what we as women can accomplish.”

I know this is true but I also know that true happiness comes from a life of balance, not just personally, not just within our own families and friends but as a community. Let’s harness the female power in this room and beyond and create a more generous balanced world.