Dr Erin Waters
Meet GPTQ Medical Educator, Dr Erin Waters
Dr Erin Waters successfully combines her love of practising and teaching in GPTQ’s Brisbane South district.
“I’ve been seeing many of my patients for 10 years. I enjoy helping them in all stages of their life, from planning their pregnancies to their pregnancies, to caring for the babies as they get older. It’s lovely to have that continuous long-term relationship.”
Finding her way to medicine
Much of Dr Erin Waters’s childhood was spent in Cairns but her family decided to make the move to the ‘big smoke’ of Brisbane for her studies. Her decision to go into medicine was almost a foregone conclusion thanks to a bit of advice from an opera singer.
“When it came time to choose my university preferences, I was tossing up between medicine and music. For a brief time, I actually went to the conservatorium but my singing teacher told me as nicely as she could that I really should do medicine. So I took her advice,” she laughs.
Bill helped her choose general practice
Erin studied medicine at the University of Queensland in Brisbane but hadn’t considered specialising in general practice until she did her GP term during her degree. Spending this time working with the ‘best doctor’ she’s ever met helped her make her choice.
“As a third-year medical student, I’d had a lot of exposure to many different doctors, but Dr Bill Tritton just blew me away. He was my supervisor at that time and it was amazing how much he knew about absolutely everything, as well as how much his patients loved him. I found his work to be very inspiring and eye-opening. And I’m now lucky to have the opportunity to work alongside him one day a week at my practice in Annerley,” she says.
Long-term patient care
Aside from practising at Ipswich Road Medical Centre with Dr Tritton, Erin also works one day a week at Coorparoo Clinic, teaches with GPTQ plus does a half-day at Headspace, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health.
Erin says the best thing about her GP work is the variety of clientele she meets and the relationships she develops, but she also loves the personal perks.
“I’ve got three kids spanning a decade. One is two, the middle is nine and my oldest is twelve. Working as a GP and medical educator is a juggle, but it allows me a lot of flexibility to be around for my children and that’s wonderful.”
Teaching students and registrars
Erin has long had a keen interest in teaching. She began informally as a junior doctor in the hospital system when she mentored her boss’s medical students, and then expanded to roles with the University of Queensland after she fellowed. Her GPTQ medical educator role was a natural progression and she’s been at it for the last two years.
“I love getting to know the registrars. I like working with them at a higher level on finessing their clinical skills and clinical reasoning,” she says. “I especially enjoy our workshops about time management and those aligned with my specials interests of mental health conditions and developmental paediatrics.”
A focus on mental health
Over her time practising as a GP, Erin has developed a particular penchant for mental health. When the chance to work at Headspace popped up, she was excited to jump on board.
“Headspace provides mental health care for young people aged 12 to 25. I got involved as over the course of my career I’ve seen a concerning emergence of mild, but still debilitating, mental health symptoms in really lovely, well-equipped families,” she says.
“I think it’s the general busyness of life and our social structures. Once people lose the forced socialisation of school, they can become very isolated. Families live very separate lives; people don’t go to church, there are no youth groups, there are no Friday night dances like my parents used to go to. So it’s very hard to get a socially anxious person who’s socially isolated the help they need,” she explains.
Erin feels it’s a big challenge for us as a society to look after our young people and it involves questioning how we’re currently doing things.
“Young people actually don’t need too much intervention. They just need support at some very critical times in their lives, plus the ongoing availability to check in with you when they need to,” she says.
