You can keep doing what you love: Dr Janet Talbot-Stern
Detroit. Mount Druitt. Georgetown. Sydney. London. Doha. Sydney again. Dr Janet Talbot-Stern’s career may have zig-zagged across the world of emergency medicine, but the decision-making process that led her to medicine in the late 1970s was direct. “I looked at business school and law and thought, ‘Boring – I think I’d rather do something with a science background’.”
Dr Janet Talbot-Stern pictured with two of her children after graduating from Medical Studies at the University of Michigan.
Already a mother to a toddler son, she says, “I had the extra experience of life. I was older obviously than the people who were going into medical school, I felt that I had the maturity and therefore the ability to understand what was going on. I thought I might perhaps have more empathy.”
Equipped with a BA from the University of Queensland and an MA in East Asian History, Dr Talbot-Stern needed to complete undergraduate courses in Science before applying to medical school, a process that took two years.
Once finally enrolled in medical school, Janet was living in Detroit with her husband and their three-year-old, but to fulfil the obligations of study at the University of Michigan, the young family had to move to the college town of Ann Arbor, which created an exacting schedule.
They later moved back to Detroit, where Janet completed the last two clinical years of medical school at Henry Ford Hospital (HFH). It was there that her love of emergency medicine was born — She did her emergency medicine training at HFH.
The family also welcomed two more sons during this period.
“I didn’t do all of this on my own,” she says. “My husband supported my plan to apply to medical school, was willing to move to Ann Arbor and drive a 150km round trip each day. He then took care of the children every other weekend during my residency, when I was doing 12-hour shifts.”
Despite challenges, the family’s globe-trotting spirit and willingness to move as required continued, and they shifted again and again – first to London, then to Brisbane where she passed the AMEC exams, allowing her to work as a physician in Australia. She also subsequently had to sit the ACEM Fellowship exam.
The next stop was NSW, where Janet worked as the Director of Mount Druitt Hospital’s emergency department. It was here that Janet developed an interest in mentoring trainees, which continued when the family returned to the USA in 1987, where Janet worked as an Attending Physician at the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. There she managed the student rotation program, taught registrars and wrote articles.
She also hosted the first dinner – at her house – for female emergency medicine registrars. “It was a very academic environment,” she says of her time at Georgetown, but adds she still got to see a diverse patient cohort.
“It was a little bit more middle-class. However, that didn’t mean that people who didn’t have any money or insurance didn’t come – you still had a very broad patient population.” She eventually became the Director of the Washington Hospital Centre and later, would complete another three years at Georgetown. In 1995 she decided to bring the rest of the family back to Sydney, where her oldest son was at the University of Sydney. Upon moving back to Sydney, Janet was employed as a staff specialist in the Emergency Department at Royal Prince Alfred.
““Once I realised that we didn’t have any trainees, my focus was attracting trainees, giving them a good education, getting them through the primary exam and the fellowship exams, so that hopefully some would stay on when they finished their training.””
She was appointed as the Director of the Department the same year and didn’t hesitate to accept. “At that point, we had no emergency medicine registrars. The medicine registrars were wonderful, staffing the department 24-hours-a-day, as well as the RMOs and interns, but we also needed emergency registrars.”
As a result, she found herself putting together a program to attract and train new registrars at RPA, and quickly took on an additional role – Director of Emergency Medicine Training – which was a natural extension of her earlier involvement in teaching.
“Once I realised that we didn’t have any trainees, my focus was attracting trainees, giving them a good education, getting them through the primary exam and the fellowship exams, so that hopefully some would stay on when they finished their training.”
By the time she left RPA in 2002, the earlier situation she described had transformed, with a greater influx of emergency medicine trainees starting their careers in the department, passing their examinations and becoming FACEMs.
She takes pride in the relationships she built while mentoring early-career clinicians. “I loved my registrars,” she says. “I’d have them over for drinks and we’d celebrate every time someone passed an exam. “I tried hard to mentor them all. I still keep in touch with a significant number. I didn’t have to make myself do it – I just loved doing it.”
Nevertheless, after several years at RPA, Janet decided to work and travel further afield. The globe-trotting recommenced with a two-year NHS Fellowship at the UK’s Coventry Hospital in 2005. This was followed by another two-year contract at St. Thomas’ Hospital. From 2010 she worked as a locum consultant in hospitals across the U.K. and when she was back in Sydney as a VMO.
Dr Janet Talbot-Stern pictured at her leaving reception as she departed Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where she worked as a Director of the Emergency Department until 2002.
“By doing locum work at the same time as travelling I was able to maintain my clinical skills,” Janet explains. “Each department was quite different in some respects but they all practised good emergency medicine.”
She continued taking on these more flexible roles before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily reoriented the world. She came off clinical work and moved to the role of Acting Director of Medical Services (A/DMS) at Bankstown and Coffs Harbour Hospitals. It was a steep learning curve and a challenging role, but she enjoyed every minute of it.
“I didn’t want to be sitting at home doing nothing,” she says, “By doing the A/DMS role I still could interact with everyone in the hospital without putting myself at risk.”
Throughout all the years in emergency medicine she has continued to teach at all levels, including multiple resuscitation courses, and has participated with ACEM as an examiner for several years.
She was given the ACEM teaching award in 2003 in recognition of her contribution to the College, and last year, also received the ACEM Distinguished Service Award. Given this recognition, she is optimistic that she has made the most of her journey in emergency medicine regardless of where she has worked.
““I still feel that I have a contribution to make.””
“There are always challenges and thoughts that, ‘I could have handled that better,’ but we are all human: You can’t be perfect all the time. You do the best you can, in whatever role you’re playing.”
However, it isn’t all work and no play: She loves travel, live theatre, visiting National Trust houses in the UK, hiking, swimming, tennis and is always trying to learn a new language when in a country she hasn’t previously visited.
With adventures still on her mind, and her children now well and truly adult and spread across the globe – a recent post-COVID holiday took her from London to Amsterdam and later, Arizona, to see her sons – she has no intention of slowing down her medical pursuits.
“You can keep doing what you love,” she says. “The decision is whether one can safely take care of patients.”
For now, the answer is a resounding yes: “I still feel that I have a contribution to make.”
(Header Image: Dr Talbot-Stern pictured with her fellow residents at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit)
