Episode 017: Urologist’s Unique Perspective on Cancer
May 22, 2018•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
One of the main challenges that you’re confronted with when you get cancer is that you are completely unprepared. You’re thrust into this alternate universe, where you’re confronted with new rules, and new terminology and new specialists, new perspectives and all of a sudden, you have to make decisions and you have to talk to new people and you really don’t understand their world and where they’re coming from.
Today, you’re going to hear from Joseph, a top urologist who works with cancer and Joseph is involved in an incredible amount of work, from seeing patients and performing procedures, to doing research and training the next generation of experts. Today, he’s going to give you an insider’s view into the world of urology:
Breaking the news on cancer
2 key reasons to get a second opinion
Unique make-up of urology
Understanding your own information needs
How to approach appointments and follow up
Why you are in safe hands with a urologist
How to get a second opinion
and much, much more!
Links
Dr Joseph Ischia Doctor Profile
Talking Urology
Episode 009: Why The Oncologist Is Your Guide Through Cancer
Full Transcript
Joe: Joseph, tell me what is it like being a urologist and what does your typical day look like?
Joseph: Being a urologist is a lot of fun. There are a lot of different specialities and we get to choose our specialty along our training, but being a urologist is fantastic because we deal with great patients and I think very interesting conditions that urologist patients have. My average day would look like usually getting up quite early, often well need to see patients that we’ve got sitting around in various hospitals, if we’ve operated in different hospitals, then we’ve got to get to wherever we’ve got to be to at eight or eight-thirty AM, which will be an operating list or seeing a list of seeing patients.
Those are the two main things that we do, is review patients, to chat about what their management will be or their next treatment or try to sort out their problems, then we’ll have operating lists and they will go for half-days. We tend to have half-day operating, half-day consulting, we call it. You can do that in either public or private hospitals. Most urologists and certainly most specialists tend to have a mix of both public and private.
Joe: Tell me, Joseph, why did you become a urologist and has that perspective changed over the years?
Joseph: I don’t think anybody grows up wanting to be a urologist. It’s a bit of an unusual speciality to choose, thinking of checking men’s prostates and looking inside bladders, it doesn’t strike you as something that a teenage boy aspires to be. I think this is a really important point about medical specialists. I think there are doctors that choose their specialty, but I think far more often the specialty chooses the doctor. Different specialties have different personality types. I always want to be an orthopaedic surgeon, so I thought this is what I’ll do, I have a sporting background, replacing knees and hips and it will all be a lot of fun. Then I realised, I didn’t really love orthopaedics, I didn’t love looking at bone fractures and deciding if people needed hip replacements.
One of my rotations when I was a junior doctor was to do urology and I was really stuck with it. I thought, this is a shame. I did it and I absolutely loved it. There were two reasons for it. One is that I really get on well with urologists. The people that were my bosses at the time, I clicked with their personalities and I think some specialities are very high-strung, other specialties are very laid back. Urology is quite good, it’s sort of in the middle. The urologist I worked with, they had a lot of outside interest, it wasn’t just about always having to look after people or thinking about that 100 percent. If you’ve got that great perspective,
