‘Pick your passions and say yes’: Professor Michael Kidd on his life as a GP registrar

“She lived in a little caravan park on the banks of the river that flowed through Dimboola. 

“I remember just going up to the caravan to check how she was doing later on that day, when her dear husband of so many years had passed away,” recalls Professor Michael Kidd.

This is the chief medical officer’s memory of one of the first visits he made to a grieving relative. 

At the time, he was working as a GP registrar in the rural Victorian town, supporting Dr John Pickering, a doctor he credits with “making an incredible impact on my career”.

“He was the sole doctor looking after the community — he looked after people in the small local hospital and served the small accident and emergency centre in the town,” Professor Kidd says.

“He also looked after the older people who were living in the town’s residential aged care facility and he made lots of home visits to his patients as well.” 

Speaking to AusDoc to mark the 25th anniversary of General Practice Registrars Australia, of which he is a patron, Professor Kidd said the importance of palliative care was one of the most valuable lessons he learned early in his general practice career. 

He saw it with Dr Pickering, but also in his general practice placement during medical school, with AFL Brownlow Medallist and GP, Dr Donald Cordner, in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. 

“At that stage, he was approaching the end of his career and he was just revered by his patients.

“He spent the morning in his clinic and then he’d spend the afternoon in his car, travelling around to visit his elderly patients, particularly those who were receiving palliative care. 

“He was supporting people with their wish to die, with support in their own homes.”

At the end of his registrar training, Professor Kidd’s head of department at Melbourne’s Monash University, Professor Neil Carson, shared another nugget of wisdom. 

“He told me that if you are providing services to people who are dying, the most important visit you do will be the one you make to the family after the person has died. 

“It’s not something Medicare will pay for, but it is something that you need to go and do.

“To sit with the family, talk about what happened and answer any questions they may have.”

This stayed with him throughout his work with patients affected by HIV and AIDS. 

Professor Kidd started working as a GP with the Victorian AIDS Council’s Gay Men’s Health Centre in the early 1990s, while completing his doctoral research.

“This was before we had triple therapy, so at that time HIV was an inevitably terminal condition and everyone thought that they were going to die from AIDS,” he recalls.

“We were finding that patients approaching the end of their life would often go home to their families in rural towns, where GPs hadn’t had experience working with people with HIV.”

This highlighted the need to reach out and offer education to all GPs, Professor Kidd says, with the role of general practice in the HIV pandemic informing his research work. 

He says that as a gay man, it was one of the most personally challenging times of his career. 

“In the early days of the HIV pandemic in Australia, I’d seen the discrimination against gay men and people with HIV in our society, including discrimination in the healthcare services.

“I wanted to use my skills to make a contribution to supporting people who are affected by that disease, and I continued to work in that area throughout my clinical time in general practice.”

He describes it as “the best of times and the worst of times”. 

“The worst because there was so much sadness … but we also had an extraordinary team of practice nurses, psychologists, dietitians, massage therapists and acupuncturists. 

“My patients taught me a lot about the importance of people being actively involved in their own care … and of community mobilisation and empowerment.”

Professor Kidd says one of the great joys of general practice is that there are rewards “every single day”. 

“Many things stick with you throughout your career and one of the advantages of the comprehensive training we receive as GP registrars in Australia is that you take those lessons with you.

“As you’re seeing patients, you reflect back and think, ‘Okay, this is very challenging, but I’ve dealt with this before … and I have the confidence to be able to support the person who’s with me now.’”

He says one of the best pieces of advice he received as a registrar was “pick your passions”.

“You can be passionate about many things, but if you want to be effective in supporting change, you need to focus on the areas where you want to make a difference,” he says.

“Yes, we are generalists, and we can provide care to everybody who walks through our door, but many of us develop special skills and interests in particular areas of medicine.

“My other piece of advice is as opportunities come through in your career, take them,” he adds.

“One of the exciting things for registrars I’m meeting now is many of them will take their skills as a GP and work in four or five different areas in Australia and around the world.

“So take the opportunities, learn new things, gain new experiences, you never know where it will take you.”

Read more: ‘Unacceptable in this country’: Professor Michael Kidd’s plea to GPs