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

Starting out in Private Practice

I finished up training here in Adelaide and wanted to move to Western Australia, but as a dermatologist, and my name is Robert Granger, and I wanted to not live in a capital city, which the main city being Perth in WA.

And I knew that there was only going to be 1 way that I could really be in a rural practice, and that is by setting up 1, because there really wasn't an alternative.

There was an alternative in Bunbury where I wanted to set up, but it was a well-established practice that was housed by dermatologists and would come down a few days each week to Bunbury.

But I specifically wanted to have an influence in my practice and have it, you know, with a very missional kind of a focus and I knew that I absolutely couldn't in their setting.

And so I thought there's only going to be 1 way that this could happen and that is by setting something up.

By the time that we moved to Western Australia, that was in February 2014, I was seeing my first patient 2 months later.

And it just took a lot of groundwork, not only that, but in the prior months, and knowing that I was going to be doing this, to start to get systems in process to make that happen.

But that's in a very brief nutshell, I guess, most of it.

Yeah, look, that's quite a bit to begin with.

So, Jason, what sort of stimulated you to do your practice?

You know, I guess Having graduated I'd worked some jobs, but I wasn't especially satisfied with them for various reasons I thought you know private practice would answer all my questions, it would deal with all the things, shortcomings I had with other jobs I'd done and so that's why at a relatively young age decided to go out independently.

Back then fortunately it was setting up a private practice was a easy thing to do, a lot easier than it is now.

Even though it wasn't that long ago, in a number of years, things have changed a lot for dentistry.

So I noticed with the outline that you put together, you talked about some demographic analysis and stuff like that.

Back then, it wasn't especially important.

You could open up most places and you would have, within a number of months, you'd be pretty busy.

Unfortunately, it isn't quite the same anymore.

But having said that, so I was fortunate to have been a dentist maybe toward the end of a good period.

But yes, coming back to why, I guess that's something that people should always ask themselves.

Prior practice certainly doesn't suit everyone.

There's lots of responsibilities and things like that, which you wouldn't have to worry about if you work, for example, in the public sector.

And so You've got to ask yourself, is this what you really want from life?

And if it is, obviously, jump for it, go for it, do the due diligence and go through all the appropriate analysis of all the things you need to consider beforehand, obviously.

But yes, for me, There were shortcomings of the jobs I had had up to that date, up to that time.

I thought, you know, I'd like to be independent, take complete responsibility from everything from the top down.

I know a lot of people would say that's not the ideal management style, you know, market managing everything from the small detail to the top.

You can do that when you're in a small set up.

Obviously if you were to grow beyond a certain size it would be unthinkable, but for me that's what suited what I wanted at that time.

Maybe those of you who just can't, can you just 30 seconds share your name and what your interest is in private practice?

I'm a social worker and I'm a counsellor.

I've done art therapy as well, So I would like to set up a private practice as a counsellor and social worker.

My background is psychiatric nursing and also specialize in CBT.

And most of my life as a professional, I've been working as a inpatient clinic nurse.

This is what we go through every day, every time.

And when I did my CPT, my eyes was more open and I realized that Some of the things that is happening in psychiatry is just more than medication, is just more than what we are just doing for them.

And because I've worked as an inpatient clinical nurse, I can see that the treatment we are given today is very fragmented.

And because it's not connected together, we are not seeing results.

So this is continuously pushing me with enormous knowledge that I'm getting from the church, from the, you know, from our faiths, and also from, like, Dr.

Nedley, that, you know, I just feel that something has to be done more for this group of people, you know, and that is constantly actually making me to feel uncomfortable every time I go to work that I'm not being pleased.

I see something has to be done, you know.

So when I did my CBT, I started doing the counselling and I could see that the impact of counselling on the psychiatric intervention is so relevant that connecting both together and also bring the lifestyle also together with it can have a very significant impact on our client.

This is a dream within me that I don't know how to actually bring it out, you know.

It's always disturbing me, it's always making me to feel uncomfortable.

And also when we talk about mission, fulfilling the mission purpose, if you work with government, it's actually very difficult in a way.

Because most of the time, if you are a clinical nurse, there's a limit of what you can actually tell them about, maybe, about, you know.

So you'd have much more scope in your practice.

Just an interesting time in my office to get on, because I want to be able to get to the question yeah yeah I'm a nurse and recently credentialed diabetes educator.

I'm moving actually to Queensland in January.

So just recently credentialed and starting my own business to work around the kids' schedule.

And yeah, so to be independent and just work around them and yeah, probably within a GP setting.

So you're interested in sort of that private practice model?

Do you have a particular interest that you want to?

I guess it's something that just floats past my mind occasionally, especially in the context of you're quite limited when you're in a bigger practice, but at the same time, you think it's such a big deal running a practice, you will not take it lightly.

And of course you need people to do it with, especially in a general practice setting in the country that you could share a lot of other responsibilities with.

But I just thought it would be interesting just to get some insights from you all to store away for you for once in a while.

So obviously 1 of the purposes of AIMAN is networking.

Each of your individual goals you can't always achieve for yourself.

And it also depends on what your role is.

So with Rob, obviously, as a specialist, and Jason as a dentist, they can set up clinics where they have the prime role, for example.

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Starting out in Private Practice

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