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Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for your support for the Twice The Doctor initiative and thank you for your continued patience in getting this important project off the ground.

This week we have contracted the web site designer who will build our website which will provide information about our initiative, our philosophy of effective volunteering, feedback from the field, means for expanding our support base etc. It will also facilitate the collection of funds and provide your tax deductible receipts.

Also this week with considerable expertise from Judith Fiander from Australian Philanthropic Services, the documents for forming the Twice The Doctor Foundation will be signed and submitted to the tax office. It will likely take another two months or so before the Foundation becomes a tax deductible entity and a similar period for the website to be fully functional. So again, thank you for your patience.

We will probably be requesting your contributions some time in late March. There are now nearly 300 doctors involved, about 90% of whom are from the Central Coast. The others are virtually all my NSW rheumatology colleagues who have responded in excellent numbers.

We are determined to make this project succeed and as you are aware, we have verbal expressions of support from a number of national and international companies. If any of you are particularly interested in helping to spread our message by giving talks to groups of doctors in other hospitals or at your college meetings, please let me know because this is the most important ingredient required for the next step of our project’s expansion which we hope to launch in January or early February. My request to speak to NSW rheumatologists at our recent annual meeting was most enthusiastically accepted. I suspect a similar request from you to your college would be equally well received. (I only spoke for approximately 20 minutes)

Finally, Seasons Greetings to all and lets remember that when we are working for the Third World, our First World problems disappear.

Rob Baume

Dear Colleagues,

 

Further progress has been made at enhancing our numbers. We are now up to 235 doctors on the Central Coast of whom 76 are specialists, 15 are GP’s and 144 are Regs/Interns/RMO’s. A special welcome to the very significant number of orthopaedic surgeons who have decided to join us.

We continue to recruit on the Central Coast with brief talks planned for the Laverty Christmas party and the Area Health Christmas party.

Lauri Harrisberg has created a Facebook page (facebook.com/twicethedoctor) to help spread the word.

Jules Willcocks’ endless enthusiasm and energy at enhancing the project is fantastic. With his help we have secured a commitment from Ravi Agarwal, head of Mediq Financial, to provide ongoing accounting services pro bono for the Twice The Doctor Foundation which is currently being formed. Jules has also organised a poker tournament with proceeds going to Twice the Doc.

Denis Crimmins is helping to organise dissemination of information to GP’s via his brother’s website “Think GP”.

Jodie Ralph is doing a ton of work in developing our website.

Dr. Jill Harrisberg has arranged a meeting with Investec to consider ways in which they may assist us.

I have been granted a presentation at the upcoming NSW Rheumatology conference where I hope to garner some enthusiastic support with a view to a state-wide campaign hopefully early next year.

Robin Mann from KPMG is looking at ways in which he may assist us.

Martin Feddersen is continuing to talk to GP’s about the project.

Offers have been made by various specialists to help disseminate the information via talks in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney’s North Shore and Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

 

Through an introduction by Dr. Tony Salgo, Dr. Norman Swan has indicated that he would be willing to do a radio interview when we are ready to take this project nationally. His kind offer was in no small part a result of my informing him that we already have over 200 Central Coast doctors on board. So we can all see how each person’s involvement helps leverage the campaign. Remember, this is a pyramid scheme for all the right reasons.

So lots of good stuff is happening! Tell your friends and watch this space.

Regards to all,

Rob Baume