Rose-Hunt Award: Dr Beres Wenck
One of general practice's great champions, Dr Beres Wenck is noted for making things happen.
'Nothing you do is ever wasted,' Dr Beres Wenck said, as she looked back on her 30 years as a GP and mother to four grown children. Acknowledging that she'd acquired a lot of her professional skills from being a mother and a daughter, she said, 'It's amazing what we learn from our family.'
For Wenck, lobbying and working for funding, programs and opportunities that improve the lives of those around her comes naturally. She started when her children were in kindergarten and primary school. They attended the local school, which was close to her practice. It also happened to be a disadvantaged school, so Wenck decided that 'what they didn't have she'd try to get'. She wrote a submission for a classroom music teacher along with all the musical instruments - string, wind and brass - that they needed. Her efforts were successful. Later, she also instigated a 'Learning for leisure program' that ran at the school from the 1980s until recently.
When she was presented with the RACGP's highest accolade, the Rose-Hunt Award at GP12, Wenck acknowledged the role her family played in the development of her professional career. 'My children taught me most of my paediatrics,' she said, and 'my family taught me most of my geriatrics'. And as a strong woman who has excelled in leadership roles, life has taught her to be a practical and lateral thinker.
As a busy young mother, Wenck started her first general practice where she knew she could serve her patients best. 'I started a practice from home,' she said. 'My practice at Milton actually started from my little surgery under my house. I could plan appointments for when the children were asleep, or if they weren't asleep they'd be just down beside me.'
By 1978, Wenck was ready to move her practice into a commercial building, and Milton Clinic expanded to the successful family and sports clinic it is today. As well as her interest in paediatrics, women's health and aged care, she developed her skills in counselling and believes today that it is an essential skill in general practice. 'One of the things you really come to learn over the years is just how much a patient's thought processes affect their general health,' she said, and 'One of the real advantages and privileges of being a GP is being involved in the special longitudinal relationship we develop with patients.'
While her clinical skills have proved visionary, as have her business skills in establishing a thriving general practice, it was something else that shot Wenck to prominence on the national stage. Her expertise in negotiation, problem-solving and corporate governance, along with her passion to improve the healthcare system, enormously benefited everyday Australians.
Her presence on boards, committees and associations, as well as ministerial appointments, has provided health reform and inspirational leadership.
In 1996, as president of the Brisbane North division of General Practice, Wenck managed a budget of $2.5 million and 15 people. During her term, as chair of the board of directors, she led the Division's management of a $22 million trial called TEAMCare Health, which was the only GP-led coordinated care trial in Australia that focused on improving healthcare delivery to patients over 65 years of age who had chronic care needs.
Wenck described the trial as the most rewarding project she has worked on. 'It took an incredible effort,' she said.
The first trial was followed up by the TEAMCare II Trial in 2003-05, which aimed to adopt the findings from the first trial.
'The second study showed a lot of benefits for patients from the intervention group in contrast to the control group', Wenck explained, 'and hospital admissions were decreased by 25%'. She noted that Health Minister Tanya Plibersek mentioned these statistics in her opening speech at GP12. 'It's amazing that it took 7 years,' she said, adding that 'sometimes you have to be a Woody Woodpecker ... if you can hang in there and stay there, you often get some of the things that you want'.
Wenck's leadership skills were noted and by 1999, she was elected president of the Australian Medical Association Queensland. There she developed its first strategic plan to improve the delivery of health systems, and she addressed crucial rural workforce issues. She also established weekly radio spots in Brisbane to communicate key public health messages, and this effort continued the groundwork for the public speaking she is so renowned for today.
Wenck has been chair of the RACGP National Standing Committee, GP Advocacy and Support since 2003; she is vice president of MDA National, and is chair of MDA's President Medical Liaison Committee. She is also medical advisor to the Australian Multiple Birth Association. And another treasured position is medical consultant to the Department of Child Safety on local and overseas adoptions - a role Wenck has worked in since 2002. Her current ministerial appointment is as a member of the Board of O-Comp, a position she has held since 2003, and she was a member of the Board of Health Promotion Queensland for many years. She was co-chair of the reference group on the 'Continuum between preventative, acute, chronic and primary care' to inform the Medicare agreement between 2003 and 2008, and was commissioned to co-author the paper 'Models of primary and community care in 2008' for the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. On a local level, she is the current principal medical director of the largest medical deputising service in Australia and she is responsible for the clinical governance of the organisation.
It is a visionary person who can develop opportunities as well as spot them, and Wenck is an expert at both. In 1994, as program director of the Brisbane North Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, she designed and implemented a cardiac rehabilitation program that employed 21 sessional GPs, an exercise physiologist and 10 part-time walking leaders. She had heard that walks through shopping centres for cardiac patients were a big hit in the United States, so she set about organising them in shopping centres around Brisbane. Enormously successful, they were eventually transitioned - under Wenck's guardianship - to The Heart Foundation and the popular walks continue today.
On leadership, Wenck has sound advice. She nominated 'being able to listen and being able to delegate to people you trust' as vital skills, followed by 'Having an idea and knowing it's a good idea and be able to take others along with you.' She said she has learned 'a lot of leadership skills from watching people', and added, 'Any time I've ever been to a meeting I've learnt something from the chair of that meeting,' and 'All the things you do, you learn a little from.'
Reflecting on her life's work to date and her legacy, Wenck said she hoped she had 'done something towards the understanding of the community and the profession as a whole on the upmost value and importance of the general practitioner'. Her work, of course, is nowhere near finished, and she nominated risk management and communication skills as high on her future agenda. With 50% of complaints about doctors coming from poor communication, she said that 'GPs must be better aware of the emotional cues a patient is giving'.
With her track record the issue will be ably addressed, but in the meantime the general practice community is blessed to have such a strong advocate.
Regarding her career as a GP, Wenck said: 'I've always wanted to do general practice ... I remember as a child thinking about it. I must have been impressed by my family GP.'
There is no doubt that the 2012 Rose Hunt Award recipient has inspired many medical students and indeed many children to follow in her footsteps.
First printed in Good Practice Issue 10 - December 2012. Written by Sharon Lapkin.