Newsletter

Dear colleagues

Here is some news from Jules Willcocks , A&E specialist and one of our Foundation directors regarding a recent A&E conference in Noosa;

“ We had a positive response with another 20 or so sign ups and several people expressing an interest in becoming an ambassador for Twice the Doctor and taking it to their local hospital. One very positive outcome was that one of the conference exhibitors was Austwide Locums. Liz Swinnerton, who is their executive manager, has pledged her support and has offered to send out Twice the Doctor information to all their locums asking them to support us. This is about 1500 doctors! She has also said that Austwide will DONATE THEIR CUT from any shift done for TTD as well! Lastly she has given me the contact name at another locum agency who she thinks will do the same.

The next day I was down in Melbourne and met with the CEO of ACEM who pledged support from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine. I spoke to the President of ACEM the week before who was also very supportive as was the chair of the International Emergency Medicine Special Interest Group of the college and so we now have formal support and buy in to the concept from an Australasian medical college which is excellent news”.

In other news

  1. Thanks to the excellent efforts of Tom Chesterman we now have a number

of  interns from Adelaide signed on with plans to recruit many more.

  1. Thanks to Jodie Ralph, the website-including the capacity to efficiently receive

donations is close to completion.

  1. Denis Crimmins has expertly organised design and printing of posters which is virtually completed.

The momentum that you, as participants have created, continues to grow!

Let us not forget our purpose and our vision of creating a major movement in order to make a really significant contribution to Third World Health.

Regards to all

Rob Baume

PS:  Less than 4 weeks till 21st of May and our inaugural Doctors day in May.

 

(We are hoping to receive your donations soon after.)

 

Newsletter

Dear Colleagues,

We have made some further significant progress as follows:

1)      Antonia (Toni) Pearson, previously a registrar at Gosford and now at Royal North Shore Hospital presented our concept to RMOs at RNSH resulting in 31 new doctors on board (ie: about 90% of her audience). Welcome RNSH residents and interns – your support is greatly appreciated! And well done, Toni! (who also passed her written primary exams, just by-the-by).

2)      Douglas Pathology has kindly offered to sponsor the printing and distribution of posters and Certificates of Appreciation. This helps ensure that we keep the Foundation’s costs to a minimum so your eventual donation goes further.

3)      Website construction has advanced and you can get a look at https://twicethedoctor.org.au/

There is an updated slide presentation posted – please send the link to your medical colleagues if you think they might be interested. Here is a testimonial from Daniella Potter. WHERE’S YOURS?!! It would really help in building the website and really make a difference in recruiting other doctors to our concept

Newsletter

Since I last wrote, we have made significant progress as follows.

1.    Largely through the efforts of Judith Fiander from Australian Philanthropic Services, the Twice the Doctor Foundation is now a reality and licensed to receive fully tax deductible contributions. From all I have gleaned, this is quite an achievement.

2.    On the advice of one of our enthusiastic supporters and promoters ophthalmologist Brian Harrisberg from Newtown, I have met with the Fred Hollows Foundation who are very excited about ophthalmologists supporting the Twice the Doctor concept linking in with a project in Africa to train eye surgeons. They have offered all sorts of support to enhance our efforts.

3.    Ravi Agarwal, head of Mediq Financial, has reiterated his commitment and excitement about our Foundation. He has also reaffirmed his very generous offer to do the Foundation’s accounting pro-bono. This would normally cost about $10,000 per year. His generous offer not only illustrates the type of support our project can garner but also allows our administration costs to be kept to a minimum, thereby further leveraging the value of your eventual contribution.

4.    With great assistance from Jodie Ralph, our website is being professionally built. It is envisaged that this will be a vehicle for attracting new volunteers and non-medical supporters, collecting funds, issuing receipts and providing feedback to contributors about what your donation achieved. So it is essential we get this right. The cost for building the website, the first years support and for establishing the Foundation has been borne by the Directors, so your eventual contribution is in no way diluted.

A Letter To Colleagues

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

Initial Letter To Colleagues

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