Meet a member: Dr Tahnee Bridson

Dr Tahnee Bridson

@SaltyDingo

QUEENSLAND YOUNG AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR: DR TAHNEE BRIDSON

29 YEARS OLD, PGY4 PSYCHIATRIC REGISTRAR

As a six-year-old growing up in Mareeba, Dr Tahnee Bridson looked up to the town’s doctors so much that she dressed up as them and carried little notebooks with her to write pretend case notes.

Almost 20 years later, she was a medical student preparing for her final exams when one of those mentors, her family GP, died by suicide.

The tragedy stunned the town and sent Tahnee down a road that would lead to her being named Queensland’s Young Australian of the Year for 2022 for her work in wellbeing support for health care workers.

“His death was a really big shock, not just to anyone who had worked with him, but the entire town was shaken,” Tahnee, 29, told Doctor Q.

“I think what surprised me the most was that everyone just forgot that they were a person too, that no one thought to ask the doctor if they were okay or even thought that was a possibility.

“And I also had some of my own struggles. Doctors and health care workers are obsessive, perfectionistic people, and we can be highly strung and anxious. That’s why we care so much about what we do, but it also has an impact on us.”

Realising there were limited resources to help health care workers with their mental wellbeing, Tahnee became interested in psychiatry as a profession. As an intern at Cairns Hospital, she took on the role of wellbeing officer for the Resident Medical Officer Society, and began a Wellbeing Week.

She’d done an elective with Orygen Youth Services and, although she’d never met Professor Patrick McGorry, cold-called him to see if he wanted to be involved. The mental health leader flew to Far North Queensland to take part.

Wellbeing Week, with events held at health care sites across the Cairns region, highlighted the struggles facing doctors and other health care workers in finding help for wellbeing issues, particularly in small towns and remote areas.

“Depending on where you work, it can be really difficult to access help. For instance, in Mareeba, the GPs or the health care workers you would go to for your own needs are your colleagues.

So you have to figure out well, where do I go if I’m scared to speak to my colleagues, or if I want privacy?” Tahnee said.

“And there is a fear of mandatory reporting to Ahpra (the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency). People still get really worried that they’re going to get reported just for saying they’re anxious. But sometimes treating doctors aren’t fully aware of the Ahpra reporting criteria, and people do report them for things like that. And then it just perpetuates this cycle.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic started, the increasing levels of stress on health care workers became apparent. Images of over-worked, fatigued and distressed doctors and nurses in hospitals across Europe and the United States flooded television screens and social media channels.

“We were seeing the videos and the news stories of health care workers sleeping in corridors. And then there was a new story of an emergency doctor in New York who died by suicide. And COVID hadn’t hit us yet,” Tahnee said.

“I messaged a few colleagues and said, ‘Hey, I’m just thinking, do you think we should do something to look after and support health care workers here?’ No-one had really thought yet about what COVID might do to the health care workers.”

Tahnee and a few interested colleagues started a WhatsApp chat and called it Hand-n-Hand (Helping Australian and New Zealand Nurses and Doctors). The name stuck, and four of them made a Facebook page. The next morning, Tahnee woke to find that 400 people had signed up overnight.

Today, Hand-n-Hand has about 2,500 members across Australia and New Zealand, including about 20 volunteers who do administrative, marketing, social media and triaging work in their spare time, and 200 who provide confidential wellbeing advice and support one-toone and in support groups.

“COVID has been really crappy, but in some ways it’s allowed us to actually make the needs of health care workers known and allowed me to actually get this idea off the ground,” Tahnee said.

“If COVID hadn’t happened, it would have been a lot harder to do, which is really sad. I think it’s the first time that everyone’s recognised the struggles that health care workers are going through.”

Hand-n-Hand is still a completely volunteer movement, with no funding or sponsorship.

“We’re all volunteers, we all work full-time jobs at the same time, and it’s been a really hard 18 months,” she said.

“So, as much as I’m in shock and still feel like an impostor, if there’s one good thing that can come out of getting this award, it would be that we could get some financial support and business support, because we’re still not reaching everyone. There’s lots of people in more isolated areas of practice, or in primary care in rural Australia that that wouldn’t know about us because we’re not reaching all the different niches of advertising.

“If we had funding, and we had back of house support, and we had actual staff on hand, then we would be able to do that.”

Tahnee, an AMA Queensland member, is currently based in Victoria, where she is doing a PhD with Orygen. Her parents accepted her award on her behalf. National winners will be announced in Canberra on Australia Day eve.

“I’d love to give credit to the entire Hand-n-Hand team, because we couldn’t do it without them. I’m very grateful to everyone and their enthusiasm to do this and to keep it going and to run with me, a junior health care worker, as the founder, is really, really lovely. I’m so grateful that they all trusted me. In particular, I would definitely thank Professor Brett McDermott and Dr Kim Jenkins and Dr Karen Allen who have been there from the beginning.”

You can contact Hand-n-Hand here handnhand.org.au