I’m actually a doctor of biostatistics so I can’t help with your medical emergency

Scenario

My undergraduate qualification is in Health Information Management, a field related to the governance of health information. There are many different graduate roles in this field, including records governance, staff management, health technology implementation science, and clinical classification and coding. This last area relates to the classification of hospital admissions, applying alpha-numeric codes to admission diagnosis and procedures that occur during the inpatient episode. I worked in hospital health information services early in my career and for a short time was a clinical coder for an aged care facility. And whilst I ensured classification was incorporated into health services I managed in my graduate years, I also realised early in my career that classification coding was not for me. During my degree, I studied computer coding, learning a couple of different coding systems, and in my graduate years following these early clinical coder experiences, started developing health information systems for use in hospitals, aged care, and primary health clinics. I affiliated much more with what is known today as digital health.

Eventually I found my way into full-time academia and it was always agreed that I would not teach the clinical coding subjects, instead usually being allocated the health informatics and health research topics that I had years of experience. Meanwhile in Australia, the clinical coded data that had always been used for epidemiological purposes was now being used for funding and resourcing purposes. Activity-based Funding (ABF) was introduced in 2012 as a funding mechanism for Australian hospitals, suddenly placing a very large spotlight on clinical coding, which is the basis of the funding mechanism.

Overnight, it seemed that Australia had gone ABF crazy, employing more coders to ensure the timely reporting of activity and investing in training for more graduates. At the time, I was living in Western Australia, a state that had been using ABF since the late 1990s for resourcing, but not funding, purposes. I was suddenly being contacted by jurisdictions and the media for my expert opinion. By now I was the Head of Discipline and could see the potential student growth opportunity emerging. As the ‘all knowing’ expert, I decided this may be an opportunity to promote the program as a growth field to attract more students. I read everything I could and recall some long meetings with the academic who taught coding in my department to ‘get up to speed’ on what this all meant. I went to my first media appointment, a podcast with a leading Australian health social media personality… unprepared. Whilst I have a strong understanding of health information management and a broad understanding of ABF, I was not the expert in the room, and about 10 minutes into the podcast recording I realised this. As I scrambled for answers in my notes, I realised it was my colleague, Julie, who should have been sitting in this seat. Julie would not need to look through her notes for the answer and, more importantly, Julie would not be spreading misinformation by guessing what she thought was the right answer.

I immediately requested we end the interview and that I would introduce them to Julie. And Julie’s podcast was amazing. From there on, whenever there was a request from the media for an interview or a quote, or an invitation to be a keynote speaker at an event, I would first offer the opportunity to Julie. And where they wanted me, as the more experienced and senior academic, we would do it as a team. And I learnt a lot from Julie and the process, both about ABF and about being authentic about what I know and what I do not.

Reflection

The situation I found myself in was an important reminder that we need to be upfront and honest about the things you do not know. I risked contributing to the misinformation about a topic that was transforming the Australian health care funding system and potentially exploited the trust placed on academics as leading experts. Further, by accepting the interview invitation, I was denying the actual expert her opportunity to speak on this important topic and receive the recognition she deserved. I am very glad that I realised my error early and that I have learnt from this and fortunately not repeated this behaviour going forward. In fact, I have gone so far to declare my expertise and that which I do not have expertise in, that when I was once approached on an aeroplane that I am a doctor and could I assist with an emergency, I responded that as a doctor of biostatistics, I couldn’t provide medical assistance but I could tell them the passenger’s statistical probability of death. (Side note – that didn’t go down well, but that’s another chapter about choosing your timing).

On reflection, I think the way our higher education structures are set up encourages academics to compete against each other to progress through academic levels to the golden throne of professor. As you will read through the subsequent case studies, there are beautiful examples of academics lifting and holding each other up instead of stepping over and on each other in our efforts to climb the scholarly ladder. I know of many early career academics who will jump at opportunities like this because of FOMO – the fear of missing out, and it can be potentially career limiting if they go too far down the path of speaking to something they do not know about and it has an undesired effect.

Advice

Know that it is ok to be upfront about what you do not know. This is a mantra we tell our students and we need to listen to this ourselves. Further, as an academic colleague, consider where you want to shine and where you can reflect that shine onto others so that they can also shine. There will be many other opportunities that will come your way and how you supported and treated another will come back ten-fold to you.