Mastering Intensive Care 038 with June Goh

Interview with June Goh – Leading by creating a family-like department culture (SG-ANZICS special episode). How well do you know your colleagues? How much do you socialise with them?Do you have an annual retreat for your colleagues and their families?

After you listen to this episode you may reflect on these questions. To give your patients the very best care possible it seems obvious that your team needs to know each other, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other, and combine and communicate well in the clinical environment.

So how much time does your department devote to fostering a department culture that feels like a family? Including getting to know each team member’s actual family. How much do you do? My Intensive Care department does this pretty well but we could always do better. And we haven’t done a retreat in my time working there.

In the final episode of 2018, you’ll listen to Dr June Goh who is all about fostering such a family environment. She came up with the idea of taking her colleagues and their families on an annual weekend retreat over a decade ago. And she organises regular resident and medical officer engagement sessions with fun activities. All of which I suspect brings them tighter together as a more harmonious team, thereby helping their patients.

June is a Senior Consultant in Singapore General Hospital and the Director of Neuroanaesthesia and Neurocritical Care. She is very involved in teaching both medical students and post graduate doctors as member of the Core Faculty Anaesthesia Residency Programme, Chair of the Residency Welfare Committee, Adjunct Assistant Professor Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and Clinical Lecturer in the Yong Loo Lin Medical School. She chairs the Singapore General Hospital transplant oversight committee. June also currently serves on the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Board, Dover Park Hospice Governing Council and co-chairs the fundraising committee. She has been an active member and past president of the Association of Women Doctors Singapore (AWDS) helping out with the various activities organised by AWDS. June is currently President of the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations and is passionate about women’s family and health issues.

In this conversation June also spoke on topics such as:

• Her early career
• Her perspective on Singaporean gender equality
• How she mixed bringing up her children with being a busy doctor
• Building trust and rapport to strengthen communication with patient’s families
• Her perspective on some of the innovations in medical education
• Coping with work stresses to stay balanced
• Managing our device usage in the smartphone era
• Identifying and mentoring successors to our institutional roles
• Her thoughts on lifestyle factors such as yoga, exercise and sleep
• Her enjoyment of fashion

Show Notes

• June Goh at Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations
• June Goh at Association of Women Doctors (Singapore)
• SG-ANZICS Asia Pacific Forum
• Human Organ Transplant Act HOTA (Singapore)
• Goh J. Commentary: On gender equality and whether women can have it all
• Bazaar most stylish women in 2017: June Goh-Rin
• June Goh: High-flying doctor-teacher, family woman, and fashionista

My genuine hope with the Mastering Intensive Care podcast is to inspire and empower you to bring your best self to the ICU by listening to the perspectives of such thought-provoking guests as Wes Ely. I passionately believe we can all get better, both as carers and as people, so we can do our absolute best for those patients whose lives are truly in our hands.

Feel free to leave a comment on the Facebook “mastering intensive care” page, on the LITFL episode page, on Twitter using #masteringintensivecare, or by sending me an email at andrewATmasteringintensivecare.com.

Further reading and listening

• Full podcast collection on LITFL and Libsyn
• More conversation on Twitter (@andrewdavies66) and Facebook