Everything Medicine Taught You About High Performance Is Backwards

I heard you talk at the start about, you know, the kind of comparison to the elite sport and to Formula One.

And when I was really starting to look at how to meaningfully make change in this space, I wanted to move away from being a well-being coach.

Not because that's not a really important thing to do, it very much is.

But in Australia, the word well-being has been now...

Antibodies.

Yeah, it's...

When you hear well-being and healthcare, you often think of yoga and mindfulness and a tea party that's meant to fix the culture and the system level issues.

Does it not

work? Well, maybe for a moment, but...

Yeah, it tends to get a few eye rolls, I've realized when I was, you know, probably two or three years ago when I was starting to run a few workshops and do some presenting.

So I really realized that I needed to change the message.

And by looking outside of healthcare and by looking into the elite sporting world and also into the military and thinking about high performance, it has been really mind opening to me actually to think about it from that angle and to really understand that for years, decades probably actually, in healthcare, the environment just has not been conducive at all to true high performance.

And so it's amazing where we've got to in 2026 with our healthcare system.

If you think about the fact that everyone's been working in conditions that are really, really harming at times and certainly not positive, supportive and enabling us to make really clear, well-informed decisions.

So...

By re or by angling the lens a little bit differently, although we're all talking about the same thing, my impression is that people's ears are pricking up a little bit to hear, oh, hang on, maybe there's a different way to look at this whole well-being thing, which has been really interesting.

I think your experience is mirror what we have in the UK, which is we weaponize resilience.

You know, if you burn out, you're not resilient, which we know is utter rubbish.

And then people say, well, being the word is a little sticky plaster of a gaping hole.

And actually people want, you know, we are.

And I think what resonated with me there, which is we work in a system that harms people.

and potentially harms patients when we are not performing.

You know, we are some of the brightest, most motivated people.

The system strips it away.

So I'd be really interested in if I was wanting to be high performance, how do we work through this? What are the secrets, the processes? Tell us a bit more.

I heard you talk at the start about, you know, the kind of comparison to the elite sport and to Formula One.

And when I was really starting to look at how to meaningfully make change in this space, I wanted to move away from being a well-being coach.

Not because that's not a really important thing to do, it very much is.

But in Australia, the word well-being has been now...

Antibodies.

Yeah, it's...

When you hear well-being and healthcare, you often think of yoga and mindfulness and a tea party that's meant to fix the culture and the system level issues.

Does it not

work? Well, maybe for a moment, but...

Yeah, it tends to get a few eye rolls, I've realized when I was, you know, probably two or three years ago when I was starting to run a few workshops and do some presenting.

So I really realized that I needed to change the message.

And by looking outside of healthcare and by looking into the elite sporting world and also into the military and thinking about high performance, it has been really mind opening to me actually to think about it from that angle and to really understand that for years, decades probably actually, in healthcare, the environment just has not been conducive at all to true high performance.

And so it's amazing where we've got to in 2026 with our healthcare system.

If you think about the fact that everyone's been working in conditions that are really, really harming at times and certainly not positive, supportive and enabling us to make really clear, well-informed decisions.

So...

By re or by angling the lens a little bit differently, although we're all talking about the same thing, my impression is that people's ears are pricking up a little bit to hear, oh, hang on, maybe there's a different way to look at this whole well-being thing, which has been really interesting.

I think your experience is mirror what we have in the UK, which is we weaponize resilience.

You know, if you burn out, you're not resilient, which we know is utter rubbish.

And then people say, well, being the word is a little sticky plaster of a gaping hole.

And actually people want, you know, we are.

And I think what resonated with me there, which is we work in a system that harms people.

and potentially harms patients when we are not performing.

You know, we are some of the brightest, most motivated people.

The system strips it away.

So I'd be really interested in if I was wanting to be high performance, how do we work through this? What are the secrets, the processes? Tell us a bit more.