Please note: the following profiles are from 2012 when this parenting guide was first published. Some of the information contained about their personal circumstances may now be slightly out of date, however the general advice is still relevant.
The following section profiles parents who have ‘been there, done that’ in relation to managing a family and their medical training. We hope that by reading the experiences of others you will have the information and motivation you need to understand that doctors can, and do, manage to fit a family into the demands of medical training. Thank you to all of our participants for sharing their experiences. Click on the names below to be taken to their profiles.
Melissa Gilbert
Melissa’s speciality is general practice and palliative medicine (hospice). She has three daughters aged 15, 11 and five, and lives in Whangarei.
Alexander Lyudin and Nicki Pointing
Alexander and Nicki were both medical students when they had their son Christopher (now almost three years old). Alexander was starting 5th year at medical school and Nicki was starting 3rd year. Nicki is now in her final year of med school as a TI and Alexander is starting his second year as a house officer. They live in Dunedin.
Vincent Wong
Vincent is now a practising GP in Wellington, but had his two children when he was a house surgeon.
Gina O’Grady
Gina O’Grady’s specialty is Paediatric Neurology—her husband Greg is a general surgical trainee who took time out of his training to complete a PhD. They have recently moved to Sydney, Australia to complete their training, but lived in Auckland for the last four years. They have two children, aged one and three.
Gina Kaye
Gina is a general practitioner, and was previously a palliative care registrar with five years’ working in hospice as a medical officer. She lives in Auckland with her four children, two boys and two girls aged 14, 11, eight and five.
Rosalynd Pochin
Rosalynd is a general surgeon with a sub-specialty interest in breast and endocrine surgery. She lives in Nelson with her husband and two daughters aged 13 years and nine years. Rosalynd had her eldest daughter while she was a basic trainee, and her second daughter amid her advanced training.
John Langham
John is a general practitioner and has just completed GPEP1. He was an ED trainee for four and a half years while raising twins. He lives in Wellington and now has three children—three and a half year old twins, and a two and a half year old.
Maria and Chris Poynter
Maria and Chris are from a double doctor family—Chris’s specialty is intensive care and anaesthesia (dual fellowship) and Maria is in Public Health Medicine. They live in Wellington and have three children aged 11 months, two years, and four years.
