Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.

AMEN Australia 2018: Healing, Surviving, Thriving

<p>Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Andrew Pennington

Student Mentorship

I think for me, because I don't have any other Adventists in my uni at all, I think.

My brother was the only other Adventist of 2 years ahead.

And for me, I think it was more that I had the support of my church as well, but I think it was just being able to stand up for what you believe in and not shut down to it.

God's like, God's always there for you and whatever you do for his name, he will glory, like he will be the 1 to take you into it.

Like I know that God put me into medicine and he won't, he will make his way happen.

You know, so I think it's just having the faith that like standing up for God and having the faith that God's plan is gonna work out in the end.

That's very much a case of priorities, isn't it?

Because it could be very easy to say, oh well, I'm doing this course for God and so I'll just acquiesce and do the exam.

And that has of course happened for some people, but Certainly I think God blesses when 1 takes a stand and is faithful.

What other sort of issues do you come up against as students that we might want to have a bit of a discussion on?

Is there any particular things that you've come up against?

Anything out of the conference that has challenged you so far?

Thinking about like, as you go into nursing and giving people medications and stuff and you can't really sometimes share your faith and even though you know that there's other solutions that they could have instead of just having this drug and you can't do anything about it and you and because you have to be well, I didn't like non-discriminative and you know, you have to talk to them if they Identify themselves as a woman when they're a man you still got to talk to them as what they prefer, even though on the chart and everything, you've got to test them as what they really are.

But I just find that hard to not be able to say things sometimes.

Okay, Does anyone else have issues around that and struggle with that kind of concept of sharing your faith in your workplace setting or student setting?

It's a bit tricky as a student, isn't it, to kind of share faith?

What about any practical sort of things that you might be able to do as a student that might be harder for you to do as a worker?

For example, do you need medicine to make a difference in medicine?

I know that as a student I have a lot more time than all the other doctors that are going around the wards doing their ward rounds because like in my final years they're all clinical years right?

So I think you have clinicals as well, the nurses do.

And I know if the pharmacists do and stuff, but there's a lot of doctors that go around and ward rounds and then they're done.

You're either like hanging around on the wards, following them around or like go home or something.

So, you know, they ask you, can you put a cannula in or can you go ask this, like get a history from this patient.

And because you have so much more time, it's crazy, because you can pray for God to give you an opportunity and he'll give you 1.

So, I would pray and be like, okay, God, help me talk to someone today.

And so I'll go do a cannula and, you know, I'd meet this lovely lady.

She's this old Arab lady that believes in God.

And she's like, oh, God bless you, blah, blah, blah.

She's like, she reminds me of my grandma.

But you know, like she starts talking about all this stuff.

And like, you see a lot of people in hospital with like Bibles on their bedside or something.

And I'll be like, oh, so you read the Bible?

You know, so it's great to create that conversation.

And cause you have time, like you can do that stuff.

And You know, I used to think, what can I do if I'm not a doctor yet?

But there are so many opportunities here and there.

Like even just being kind to a patient or them saying, oh, can you get the nurse for me?

And I asked this and that and that instead of them having to get up or call the button or something, just responding to them in a nice way, they notice there's a difference.

And then when you come around the next day on the water, and they're like, hi, and they don't say hi to the other doctors because the doctors are mean or whatever.

Sorry, not you, but like the ones in hospital, but like, then they'll be like, hi to the student and the doctors will look at you like okay But like there's always time you do you get it like you gotta get it right?

Yeah, so I know that's what I found I'm pleased you mentioned that that's what I wanted to get to I've got a question for the pharmacy students here.

As a pharmacist, how do you relate to the fact that a lot of what we're sort of trying to do here is to not use medicines.

How do you feel about that, given that's what you're studying?

Actually, when I, like before I entered and enrolled for this degree, I didn't want to do pharmacy for that very reason, because I was like, oh, because, you know, how like people push drugs when like there's other lifestyle medications that you can take and stuff like that.

So I felt like that was a conflict of interest for me.

Because I was like, I don't want to be giving people drugs when there's other ways to heal them.

But I don't know, there was a lot of prayer that went into that to making me enrol.

But I think that the way I want to make a difference is that I don't want to just be, I don't know how I'm going to do it yet, but I don't want to just be, you know, giving people drugs just for the sake of giving people drugs.

Like I would want to counsel them in the time that you get a pharmacist guest to counsel a patient to see if that maybe they can try something else or try like they were talking today about how exercise is good for depression.

So instead of you know, taking anti I don't know how it works yet, I'm only in first year, but just try something else.

And also there is a benefit for like medication is necessary.

So for you know like, I don't know, cancer patients or you know people who have had like operations on their heart or things like that.

So it's not completely like, oh, don't take drugs at all.

But I do believe that it can work together, but it should also like when there's an opportunity to say like there's another way, I'm going to say try the other way.

I work in the community pharmacy as well.

So I've been observing my manager who is the pharmacist and I see like how he get really close to the patient is through building relationship and that's when the patients will come in like almost every day some of them come in every day and like that's when I guess more opportunity to share with them like maybe you can say like even though I'm giving you this medication, there's other lifestyle changes you can do to decrease your dose and slowly wean off and seize the medication, those kind of type of stuff.

So I guess I think spending time like building the relationship will definitely like help set the foundation to share more.

1 of the things I think there's a number of roles that pharmacists can perform and some of those can be around doing medicine reviews.

There's actually item numbers in general practice for that.

So you can be a part of reviewing a person's medications.

But Like with anything, it's building relationships, isn't it?

So if you're a community pharmacist and you're building relationships, and you'll get to know some people because they'll be coming in every month sometimes for a script or more, you'll pretty quickly work out what's going on in their life.

And that's asking God to give you wisdom to know how to maybe gently push them.

But you need wisdom, you need to be harmless as a dove and wise as a serpent.

So because if you're deemed to be interfering with the medications, the doctors may not be happy with you.

Do any of you here have any mentors in your professional life?

What do you think about the concept of mentorship?

I don't know any pharmacists that, so I think it's hard, but like spiritual mentor there is, but not like professional mentors.

So yeah, not like inventors, like professional mentor though.

For me, like professionally, I don't have a mentor yet and I think it's a good idea because when we heard about people praying, we need prayers and we need to talk to godly people about how our career and spirituality comes together so I guess it's a good idea to have a mentor who is professionally and spiritually like guiding us?

At the moment I'm studying dentistry and then I know a lot of dentists and also I know a few Adventist dentists but I none of them they are.

I haven't asked anyone to be my mentor yet.

But I guess I really want to have a mentor who also a dentist and also a dentist.

And then because like dentistry is not like unlike many medicines, like medical doctor, they get rebate for Medicare, a lot of services, but like dentistry, they are like really underfunded.

And a lot of people actually need to see a dentist, but they can't afford it.

And those people who can afford it in the private practice, they don't necessarily need dental treatment as much as others.

For me I actually want to be involved in the public dentistry that way you can really help people but unfortunately in Victoria it's very underfunded and then there's not many space available so I want someone who has similar line of passions, like who wants also help in a private sector, sorry, in the public sector, and also manage to thrive and do well.

So yeah, it's hard to find someone like this.

So at the moment I haven't found anyone yet, because most of the dentists are working in private practice.

I think for me personally, I'm blessed to be at a church with a lot of health professionals in it and Adelaide City Church, just down the road.

And I've been going there for 8, 9 years now, somewhere along there.

So I've had people who've seen me grow up in my high school life and my uni life.

And I've had people support me in my dreams at the beginning and all the way through.

So a bit of background, I guess, for my mentors, they believed in my dream at the beginning.

So I wanted to actually be a doctor back when I was in high school.

But along the way, things changed and they're still supporting me and my passion now.

I always wanted to work with kids, so teaching is sort of the next best thing.

And they support, they trust, they pray for me, which I think is a huge thing.

And they tell me that they're praying for me or they check in with me.

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