Dr Katrina Calvert found her way back to medicine in her 40s and her work now is a love letter to her joys of life – and the mothers and newborn babies she helps.
By Ara Jansen
When you ask Dr Katrina Calvert why she became a doctor, it’s actually a better story to ask her why she became a doctor again.
Thanks to a dad in the air force, Katrina was born in Germany and grew up all over the world. When she decided she wanted to be a GP, she started medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. During her rotations, she fell in love with obstetrics. She loved the happiness and feeling of optimism in the specialty. She’d found her career home.
In 2006, with a year and half to go of her specialist training, she was looking after a patient whom she had grown to know well. The woman delivered a stillborn baby. It broke Katrina’s heart.
“I could not get over it,” Katrina says who was in her early 30s at the time. “I was absolutely devastated. I could not talk to the patient about it, as I could not bring myself to speak to her. The failure of not being able to step out of my own emotions was unbearable to me, alongside not being able to manage my patient.”
“As a result of this event and a growing doubt that I was capable of doing the job anymore, I gave up medicine and walked away from it all.”
“I could not talk to the patient about it, as I could not bring myself to speak to her. The failure of not being able to step out of my own emotions was unbearable to me, alongside not being able to manage my patient.”
Katrina had met her husband during her early O&G training. Irishman Dr Paul McGurgan was a year ahead of her. When he was offered a job at King Edward Memorial Hospital, they made the decision to move to Perth. Katrina was pregnant with her third child, joined Cottesloe Playgroup and spent the next 10 years as a stay-at-home-mum.
As her children grew and became a little more independent, she started doing some part-time university teaching at UWA with the medical students.
“I really loved teaching and loved the students’ enthusiasm and engagement. I thought that was going to be me – a teacher of medicine.
Hands-on
“One day a student asked a question I didn’t know the answer to and I realised that I had been out of practice for a while. I realised I needed to be practising in order to teach. I applied to AHPRA, decided I would become a GP and got my registration.
“I ended up at King Edward and fell in love with obs and gynae all over again. So, I applied for training and started all over again. I became a resident at King Eddies and completed the program in six years to become a consultant in 2020.”
Despite her age, Katrina returned to being a junior on the delivery teams. A story she remembers fondly was being called the baby singer after manually turning a baby and delivering it, while her team were working with another mother. The team returned and the father told them that Katrina had sung to the baby and it had arrived.
“It’s so joyful when you help a woman produce a baby. When you are there in that space, it’s such an incredible feeling. I’m hooked again!”
Now Katrina has the best of both worlds combining her love of teaching and imparting knowledge with practical work. She is director of Post-Graduate Medical Education at KEMH and teaches and advises as well as delivers babies. Her Twitter profile says: obstetrician because there’s no better way to spend the day.
Senior to Katrina for a long while was her husband Paul, who is also an obstetrician and gynaecologist. The pair have only found themselves in theatre together once. After a number of “loves” and “darlings” came after operating instructions, they figured it was better not to be doing that again.
With two obstetricians in the same house, Katrina jokes that when she’s on overnight call, she often tells people “call me if you need anything. I sleep next to an obstetrician in case you need a second opinion”.
Caring genes
Something of Paul and Katrina’s journeys must have rubbed off on their children as their eldest son is doing medicine and their daughter is studying psychology with a master’s in education. Their youngest son is still in high school.
“I’m sure we have influenced them,” Katrina says of her children. “It has always been important to us to let them know that they don’t have to do well but they do have to do good. We’ve tried to instill in them a sense of social responsibility.
“They are privileged kids with a lot of good fortune and it’s important they do something to pay that back. It’s also important they pay it back in a way they are passionate about.”
To relax, meditate and decompress, Katrina chases the black line at her local pool and in summer swims to Rottnest once a year. Her team of four have been doing that since 2016. While swimming is great for her physical health because she’s a chronic asthmatic, she says it’s equally important for her mental wellbeing.
The family also have three Irish setters – Rosie, Paddy and Ruadh – who definitely bring plenty of energy to the household and require vigorous daily walks.
Katrina’s biggest hobby is sewing and she makes scrub hats and shirts in material with fun designs. Bright Indigenous and Pride patterns might also be her handiwork if you see them around the hospital. Babies born during NAIDOC week this year received specially patterned beanies as well. Her son in medical school recently went to a local school to help with a teddy bear hospital and Katrina made him scrubs with dinosaurs on them. Of course, the kids were chuffed.
“It’s great for my soul to make these. I wear my own designs and give them away. You have to find ways to put joy into your day.”
Katrina also sits on the board of Helping Little Hands, a not-for-profit which supports and empowers families of premature and sick babies. This allows her to continue supporting babies after delivery.
Not forgotten
While Katrina loves her current work and being back in the medical world, that old wound some days exerts a little power. “It’s a trauma you carry forever. The most I can hope for in my field is not that you won’t have scars but that you are able to recognise and know where your trauma is and its triggers.
“After going back to work in the perinatal field, a very wise midwife helped me see that I don’t have to emotionally distance myself from my patients and that’s what I berated myself for not being able to do.
“It can’t be about you, but it can be that you are affected by an event. You don’t have to be cold and distant. You can be in it, but not in it to the point that it’s about you. I show emotion at work in the teaching and client space and it’s OK to say, ‘I’m having a bad day, but I’m still going to help you’.
“I’ll tell someone ‘this is going to be a sad day but I’ll help you through it’. That allows me to live my core values of helping and being of use and supporting someone going through something without hurting myself.”
In support of her peers and those in training, Katrina started a cuddle team providing debrief opportunities. She was also largely responsible for adapting a UK emergency multidisciplinary obstetric simulation training course and facilitating it at KEMH.
These were some of the reasons why, at the age of 46, she was awarded the prestigious Dr Camille Michener Legacy Award for Junior Doctor of the Year in 2019, sparking one of her swimming team mates to joke, “What exactly is the definition of ‘junior’ in this junior doctor award?”
Katrina is passionate about doctor education, wellbeing and emotional support. As a result, she is chair of the RANZCOG working group on wellbeing and has a master’s in health professional education from UWA, which looked at outcomes after feedback is given to lecturers.
Outreach
Locally, she is a committee member of the Doctors’ Health Advisory Service WA, a confidential and anonymous advice line and referral system for doctors and medical students seeking assistance with health or personal problems. The need for the group has been brought into sharp focus with the recent suicide of an obstetrician in Canberra.
“I feel like I have a certain licence that I didn’t have in my 20s, when juniors were often supposed to look and feel strong. I tell them it’s OK to not be OK, and OK to need some space, a cuddle or time off. It’s also OK for others to see that something affects you, or to say you don’t want to see a certain patient because you’re feeling triggered and please can the team help me. I am so lucky to have been able to reach out to my clinical teammates and receive support when I have asked for it. We just need to learn to ask.”
A natural warmth and inclination to teach and help is perhaps no surprise when you discover that Katrina’s mother, grandfather and brother are teachers and her father also taught people to fly.
“It’s in our blood and it’s such a joyful thing to do. It’s so rewarding and I get so much back. It’s cup-filling.
“Being a doctor is a great job and a great thing to do. To be able to make a connection with someone at an important time in their life is a hell of a way to earn a living. You are part of that day and that event. We’re lucky to be able to do that.”