Tanveer Ahmed
Interview with Dr Tanveer Ahmed
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
It is amazing some of the talent with have lurking within our midst…
Tanveer Ahmed sent ripples through the medical establishment and psychiatry training establishment with his recent op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald that eloquently (if not quite accurately) portrayed the pain of failing the clinical exams.
So how did a psychiatry trainee come to be writing for one of the most prestigious of Australia’sbroasheets? He is on staff!Tanveer combines clinical work and training with journalism. In fact, he left medicine for a couple of years to pursue a career in TV journalism, for SBS in 2003.
These days, Tanveer is a regular contributor to major newspapers and online entities, writing on matters social and political. He also appears regularly on radio and television in discussion programs such as SBS's Insight and ABC's Difference of Opinion, as well as Radio National.
On a lighter note, you may have seen him playing the role of the Bingo Commissioner on the Channel 7 game show National Bingo Night. Plus, Tanveer performs comedy and was a dual state finalist in the ABC JJJ Raw Comedy contest.
As if that wasn’t enough, in 2006, Tanveer was chosen to attend the inaugural Australia's Future Forum, as one of 100 future leaders of Australia under the age of 40. In addition, he is an appointee to the Advertising Standards Board, and is a UN ambassador representing men against domestic violence.
Phew!
Tanveer has also used his abilities to improve the lot of junior doctors – he is a past Chair of the AMA Doctors in Training federal council.
Tanveer was happy to speak with The Responder about his experiences.
Tell me a little bit about your background.I was born in Bangladesh and arrived in Australia with my family when I was five. I lived most of my life in Sydney, having grown up in its western suburbs.I studied Arts/Medicine at University of Sydney, graduating in 2000. I majored in anthropology and politics in the Arts bit and spent some time at UCLA Berkeley, also studying anthropology as well as US politics.I left Medicine for a couple of years after RMO1 year to pursue journalism before returning to start Psychiatry training.
What attracts you to Medicine? And Psychiatry?The instant access to people’s emotional lives and the core of human experience is what keeps me interested in Medicine. Nobody sees what we get to see. In Psychiatry I see a great mix of the hard and social sciences and a great complexity.
What attracts you to Journalism?I feel like journalism is often a bird’s eye view of things. It tries to link the political with the personal and does it through the naturally engaging way of stories. I know we have our psychiatric formulation, but I often feel the linkages I have to perform in a broad ranging journalistic piece or column is so much more comprehensive.
Do you find any parallels between Psychiatry and Journalism? Do you find skills in one area help with the other?I sometimes tell people that Psychiatry is the story telling speciality of Medicine. In that way it overlaps with journalism. The interviewing aspect also has similarities with journalism. However, it is ultimately a clinical job and so it should be.
How do you logistically balance the different commitments in your life?Working full time is very difficult! I risk spreading myself too thin so that things end up “underdone”.
Often, in the media, I am referred to as a “psychiatrist” not as a “registrar”; I think this is because people outside Medicine have no idea how the process works and what the difference is. But it gets me into trouble with the College. I sometimes feel that my position as a registrar makes it hard to manage – my supervisors look askance at range of activities I am involved with, and think that I am not committed.
What prompted you to become involved in AMA DiT? What was your biggest achievement while Chair of the Council?I have often felt that junior doctors are among the most industrially passive groups, yet we are very vulnerable. My cohort have had their provider numbers stripped, training programs have become longer and yet the systems they often work in are very old school and poorly responsive to trainee needs. This all occurs while their peers in other professions enjoy stupendous growth and global opportunities. I think it is a very difficult time to be a trainee doctor.
The achievements vary from ongoing pressure on governments and health departments about the huge increase in trainees and how to train them, to satisfying impacts upon Colleges or Health Services about our entitlements. I think giving the older members of the medical establishment a real wake up call about the modern world was also satisfying.
You recently presented your thoughts about the ideal healthcare system of the future to some of Australia’s top politicians and business leaders. Can you share some of your ideas?I think ultimately Australia has a pretty good system. The key point I made was that what the modern health worker is trained for has little overlap with what we are ultimately asked to do. Modern health systems in the West are increasingly the front line of societies that have overturned the functions of the family to the state or the private sector. So much of what we see in Psychiatry is the medical froth on top of intractable social problems. Chronic disease, lifestyle illnesses and the huge expenditure in final stages of life should be the real focus. I argued that, as a society, we need greater education about death because our inability to deal with it is a key driver of health costs at the end of life.
I fundamentally believe in greater role substitution of doctor’s duties. I think it will be more efficient, save money and make our own jobs more interesting. I think a great deal of what modern doctors do is relatively tedious and a poor use of our enormous training.
What has been your most exciting journalistic experience? Why?Covering the Iraq war was very exciting with SBS. I was still based in Australia but the level of communication with global agencies and ‘round the clock reporting made it very exciting.
Interviewing seriously big names is always exciting eg Japanese PM, Pauline Hanson, Rose Byrne…
Right now, I feel like every column I write makes a discernible difference. From writing about multiculturalism and Muslims, the vulnerability of international students, to medical training, the power of the media to reach millions is unchallenged.
What role do you see for yourself in the future, given your mixed skill set?I would like to be a public intellectual, writer and social scientist who happens to work part time as a psychiatrist. What I see as a psychiatrist can help drive some of the topics I write about. I write about how what we see in mental health tells us more broadly about the world we live in. My attraction to it is kind of like the canary it the mine idea - what comes to us is, to an extent, an indicator of what is going on in society as a whole. I often feel straitjacketed in Medicine. If you are intellectually curious and engaged in the world, narrow clinical duties, while important, are ultimately just that. Very narrow. But I do like the work of Psychiatry as a reality check.
What is your advice for other trainees who fail exams, or have other difficulties with the training system?
Be clear about the requirements! (This is very difficult in the RANZCP program, unlike some of the overseas Psychiatry programs.)
Find the people who are close to that exam, and who know exactly what is needed. Many consultants don’t know what is needed – while they may feel the process is unfair, they don’t actually take any action like joining training committees to change things, or finding out what they can do to prepare trainees better.
For those of you interested in reading, watching or hearing some of Tanveer’s work, you can find it all at his website: http://www.tanveerahmed.net.au/