About Bubble Up
Do you outwardly pride yourself on being a great clinician but actually worry about your ability to keep all those balls in the air? Are you trying hard to balance family life, work life, and manage everything well? Do you sometimes feel like you’re failing on all fronts?
Why did Tessa, Andy, Ben, and Henry create Bubble Up for you?
Why would we start a new website when we already have Don’t Forget The Bubbles?
This is a space to provide the tools for busy clinicians to help manage their work-life balance in a way that works for them. We’ve been there, and we know exactly what challenges you are all facing. We want to help you become more confident, happy, and equipped to handle all the challenges that life and work has to throw at you.
Tessa’s story
Hey – I’m Tessa Davis, I’m a Paediatric Emergency Consultant, a Senior Lecturer, a mother-of-three. I lived in Sydney for 6 lovely years and headed back to the UK 6 years ago, and I’m now based in London.
I’ve been a consultant for 3 years now, but before that I worked in 31 different jobs as I rotated through my training in the UK and Australia. At the same time as I was going through training, I had my three kids, three periods of mat leave, and worked part-time for some of my training.
It’s safe to say that I worked really hard to perform well on all fronts but often felt like I wasn’t hitting the mark in any area at all.
Over these years, I learnt key lessons on how to develop a system for myself to manage my time well, stay productive, be a good team member, lead well, and have time where I can be present and connect with my family.
How does Tessa know what she’s talking about?
About 5 years ago I realised I was pushing myself too hard. I was trying to take on every project going to impress the people around me. I was trying to be a good parent to my three young kids – but I was never really present when I was with my family because I always had a project, or a work problem running through my head. I was checking my emails every 10 minutes desperately trying to keep on top of things. But I would go home from my shift every day mulling over small mistakes I’d made and negative interactions I’d had with a colleague. I knew something had to change. And so I started to take back control of my life.
Henry’s story
G’day! I’m Henry Goldstein, I’m a General Paediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Advanced Trainee, a father of three, a medical husband and ultrarunner.
I’ve wended a decade-long long path through paediatric training, with highs and lows and amazing side quests. I’ve benefited from experience in emergency, medical, critical care, psychiatry and several medical leadership roles and establishing services and roles here in Queensland. I trained alongside my partner, and have taken opportunities to work part time to be with our three young kids.
It’s one heck of a balancing act between training, work, family, life, sports and creative projects, and I’ve learned a lot about energy management, planning and cognitive flexibility.
How does Henry know what he’s talking about?
I’d describe myself as an intellectual magpie and habitual over-thinker. This, in concert with the last decade of ecclectic paediatric medical experience and other broad interests has given me a multitude of perspectives on our medical system, team functioning, learning, leadership, families and our evolving relationships with technology.
Andy’s story
Hi – I’m Andrew Tagg. I’m an Emergency Medicine consultant, Senior Clinical Fellow and Dad to three _very_ different girls. Having grown up in Cornwall I moved to Melbourne to finish my training and I haven’t looked back.
I’ve been a consultant for 6 years now but have had the very definition of a portfolio career, spending time out as cruise ship doctor, circumnavigating the globe as well as time climbing in and of helicopters for the state retrieval service. Working in small teams, with little direct oversight, has been challenging but I have learnt to stay motivated and set my own standards, rather than rely on just settling for average.
How does Andy know what he’s talking about?
When I finished my time at sea I was years behind my peers in terms of training, but years ahead when it came to customer service and managerial skills. I’d learnt to tie a bow tie, do the waltz and navigate the challenging interdepartmental politics between floating hotel and hospital.
Trying to study with young children knocking on the door helped me reframe my priorities, allowing me to be present at home and to value the time I had for my own growth.
Ben’s story
Hey – I’m Ben Lawton, Paediatric emergency physician, associate professor, simulation consultant, husband, dad of teenage daughters and wannabe ski-bum.
In my seven years of consultant practice, I have taken opportunities to serve as a simulation service director, a director of emergency medicine training, a research lead, and as deputy medical director of a large emergency department. My training journey took me from the UK to Australia with a brief detour to Canada. Having had our first child while at medical school, work-family integration is something I have been working on for my entire career.
How does Ben know what he’s talking about?
Twenty-nine rejection letters from medical schools persuaded me that professional and academic success for me were going to be things that would need to be approached creatively. I have discovered the value in, and techniques for, identifying and exploiting my strengths, while developing suitable mitigation strategies for my weaknesses.
I am a huge fan of thinking outside the box and love learning from people with knowledge and skillsets vastly different from my own.
Our Don’t Forget The Bubbles Journey
We started DFTB as a simple blog in 2013. And it’s now grown to a community of healthcare professionals supporting each other and developing a suite of educational resources across our website, our online courses, our social media channels, our live events, and our Discord community.
We now have over 1000 posts on the website, all with authors and bios listed to offer transparency and accountability. We have DOIs and Altmetric to track our impact (our COVID-19 data post currently has an Altmetric score of over 3100). We have over 5000 views per day, with over 13k followers on Twitter and Facebook. Our website Net Promoter Score is 72.
We have authored a number of publications (15+) in peer reviewed journals including review articles and original research. Our DFTB research team is also now running its own original research studies.
We have collaborated with a range of paediatric organisations globally. We’ve worked with the European Academies of Paediatric Societies (EAPS) on their advocacy project on return to school during COVID-19, designing and disseminating their guidance. We’ve worked with PREDICT (Australian research group) and PERUKI (UK research group) designing, translating, and disseminating their research findings across a number of large research studies. We’ve partnered with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health on our project collecting and summarising all the COVID Data in children as it is published (referenced in two World Health Organisation documents in 2020)
And in 2020 we launched Skin Deep, a global collaboration to improve the diversity of paediatric images online which is supported by the British Association of Dermatologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
But most importantly we’ve built a community of like-minded individuals who all work together to improve the care we deliver to our paediatric patients.