Meet a member: Dr Honor Magon

Occupational Medicine Registrar, Metro South Health, Digital Health Clinical Consultant, Resile, Digital Health Special Interest Group Deputy Chair, Committee of Doctors in Training (CDT)

Registrar Dr Honor Magon is packing her bags for sunny California after being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Stanford University, funded by The Kinghorn Foundation.

Honor will study a Masters of Science in Clinical Informatics Management, which she describes as a mixture of a Masters of Business Administration, Public Health and information technology and analytics. While studying at Stanford, she looks to address three core questions.

1. How might we improve the digital ecosystem that surrounds our healthcare workers to reduce the administrative burden that is creating a key psychosocial hazard in the workplace?

2. How might we deliver timely and confidential support services to healthcare workers, particularly junior doctors using existing and emerging technology?

3. What needs to change in our governance structure within Australian hospitals and healthcare systems, to put in preventative health strategies to protect the health and wellbeing of our healthcare workers?

Honor has been involved with AMA Queensland since serving as a Medical Student Representative on Council in 2015. She has also been an active member of the Committee of Doctors in Training since graduating and was part of the team that created the first Junior Doctor Conference and Resident Hospital Health Check.

“I’ve been a part of AMA Queensland since 2015 as the medical student councillor, where I sat on state council to provide the voice of medical students. At that point in time, CDT was working on the very first hospital health check, and the very first iteration of Wellbeing at Work.

“There has always been a conversation about junior doctors, right from the very beginning of my involvement. Since then, each of the aforementioned initiatives have blossomed into their own, highlighting the importance of the CDT’s role in doctors’ wellbeing.

“For me, I’ve been the membership and events representative, PA Hospital representative, and this year, the deputy chair of the digital health interest group. I always come back to CDT, as I find it’s always a similar group of people who want to do one thing – create change.”

It’s no surprise to AMA Queensland that Honor was destined for bigger things, and that doctors’ health has always been her passion.

When asked why doctors’ health has always been a priority, Dr Magon said: “a clinician needs to be working at their best in order to provide the best care to our most vulnerable citizens. I’ve been a patient, and I’ve been the family of a patient. I want to know that I am being cared for by people who are working at their best, physically and psychologically.

“Through COVID, we saw that healthcare workers have already fragile workplaces. I also know through my occupational medicine training that there’s so much more work to go to reduce hazards and optimise safety in the workplace for doctors.

“AMA Queensland helps by advocating for safe hours, more clinicians, getting help when needed, but I’m hearing from my colleagues that, day to day, they also want faster access to data, the right data, and to access it easily.

“This practically allows them to do their jobs more efficiently, and allows them to get home on time - an element to improve wellbeing. Clinicians have a duty to help other clinicians, and I figure that this is my way of exploring another way to improve doctors’ health,” she said.

“Digital systems in healthcare are moving quickly, and there’s lots of different fields. Access to data is a big positive, but we face new challenges in ensuring security of such data, and getting the right data at the right time.

“In terms of impact on junior doctors, we will grow up in this space of needing to be quickly tech literate. It’s already growing with use of electronic medical records, where our junior doctors are the biggest users of the system. This is one application of a technology to do our job, and there’s so many more to come.

“This generation of doctors has an opportunity to be able to see our technologies mature, but with that will come a number of headaches when implementation doesn’t go to plan.

“Where clinicians need to be is in the design, implementation and quality improvement space of our digital systems. This will help push forward the capabilities of our digital systems, with both patient users and clinician users considered at every step of the way.

“I’d specifically like to see a specialised group of clinicians in clinical informatics, ensuring there is always someone translating a technological change to a real world use case and application to the clinician. I’d also love to see more focus on intuitive user interfaces, and interoperable systems. Right data with the right clinician, for the right patient at the right time.”