That means more than 160 days of the past 12 months have been challenging for most of us and worse even for women with children or living with domestic violence.
These are some help lines you can share with your patients.
If you are lucky enough to be living in another state enjoying the freedom of seeing loved ones, circulating without restriction, holidaying and socialising, please spare a thought for your Victorian sisters down here, who are managing patients who are grieving loss of loved ones, the frustration of having done the right thing and still feeling like they’re being ‘punished’.
Many people describe feeling powerless, hopeless, angry, frustrated and worse than anything they’ve felt before. An emptiness. People are describing losing hope. These are the conversations GPs are having everyday multiple times. It is hard to keep smiling and say that it’ll all get better even though we know, eventually it will.
On the upside however, vaccination queues are growing and media reports of ‘risks of dying from clots’ seem less important than loss of freedom. Onwards we go, AFMW congratulates all our Victorian Medical Women for keeping Victorians safe through yet another critical phase in the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Associate Professor Magdalena Simonis AM is the Immediate Past President of the AFMW (2020-2023), former President of VMWS (2013 & 2017-2020) and current AFMW National Coordinator (2024-2026). She is a full time clinician who also holds positions on several not for profit organisations, driven by her passion for bridging gaps across the health sector. She is a leading women’s health expert, keynote speaker, climate change and gender equity advocate and government advisor. Magda is member of The Australian Health Team contributing monthly articles.
Magdalena was awarded a lifetime membership of the RACGP for her contributions which include past chair of Women in General Practice, longstanding contribution to the RACGP Expert Committee Quality Care, the RACGP eHealth Expert Committee. She is regularly invited to comment on primary care research though mainstream and medical media and contributes articles on various health issues through newsGP and other publications.
Magdalena has represented the RACGP at senate enquiries and has worked on several National Health Framework reviews. She is author of the RACGP Guide on Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery and co-reviewer of the RACGP Red Book Women’s Health Chapter, and reviewer of the RACGP White book
Both an RACGP examiner and University examiner, she undertakes general practice research and is a GP Educator with the Safer Families Centre of Research Excellence, which develops education tools to assist the primary care sector identify, respond to and manage family violence . Roles outside of RACGP include the Strategy and Policy Committee for Breast Cancer Network Australia, Board Director of the Melbourne University Teaching Health Clinics and the elected GP representative to the AMA Federal Council. In 2022. she was award the AMA (Vic) Patrick Pritzwald-Steggman Award 2022, which celebrates a doctor who has made an exceptional contribution to the wellbeing of their colleagues and the community and was listed as Women’s Agenda 2022 finalist for Emerging Leader in Health.
Magdalena has presented at the United Nations as part of the Australian Assembly and was appointed the Australian representative to the World Health Organisation, World Assembly on COVID 19, by the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) in 2021. In 2023, A/Professor Simonis was included on the King’s COVID-19 Champion’s list and was also awarded a Member (AM) in the General Division for significant service to medicine through a range of roles and to women’s health.
