HOMEGROWN
DOCTOR TIGUE TOZER
The travelling doctor WORDS ANNA RAWLINGS PHOTOS CHESTERTON SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY
The intellect of a doctor rarely resides in the same body as the soul of a wanderer. But for Doctor Tigue Tozer, an upbringing in the UK, Sri Lanka and America, love of travel, and global medical education now sees him share his healthcare message with an international audience.
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he human body is scientifically made up of blood, skin, muscle and bone. But it’s not a medical definition that gives the heart purpose to keep passion flowing through our veins. Tigue Tozer, 29 is the embodiment of this. As a second-year resident medical officer undertaking his pre-vocational medical training through Greenslopes Private Hospital, and currently at The Sunshine Coast Private Hospital, he writes scripts of a different kind as the medical correspondent for news program Newsfirst Sri Lanka. “I haven’t had the most direct path, it’s quite a meandering route,” Tigue shares of his academic and career pursuits. Tigue records his news segment Your Health in Australia to be broadcast overseas – an innovative addition in the political and conflict news environment of Sri Lanka. He has been a correspondent off-and-on for the news program for almost a decade, whetting his media appetite as medical correspondent from his then-base of the United States, and as the foreign correspondent covering the 2008 Democratic Primaries and Presidential Race. In November 2013, Tigue, who has also published abstracts in medical journals, was invited to speak about global medical engagement at a major conference in the States. The topic was something he was
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passionate about, as during his early years of study, Tigue explored the world, using his passport as a passageway to a new understanding of medicine and collecting knowledge from a multicultural mecca. Airport transit lounges became gateways to the world’s classroom, as Tigue boarded planes to meet new teachers from India, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the US, learning how to speak the language of healthcare in different cultures. For Tigue, there’s a place in his heart for all; his accent when he speaks is reflective of a global childhood growing up in Glasgow, England and Sri Lanka. “I feel for us in medicine, it is good for us to travel, to go to different countries and areas and learn different ways of doing things,” he explains. “Ebola is not a West African problem anymore, it’s global. It’s the same in the States, malaria is coming in from Mexico. In training as medical students and junior medical officers, learning a different way of doing things is highly beneficial and one of the best things I’ve ever done.” After sitting his board exams in the States, Tigue set his sights on Australia as his next destination; putting correspondent duties on a temporary hold. As a then-medical student, Tigue was living in St Lucia, Brisbane in the 2011 floods, which gave him a vivid flashback to a Sri Lankan profilemag.com.au