Interview with Dr Michael Taplin

By Ben Muston

Dr Taplin is an adult and paediatric ENT surgeon (otolaryngologist) who has held the position of Visiting Medical Officer at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick since 2006. He is also a VMO at many other private hospitals around Sydney. One of our executives, Ben, had the chance to sit down with him and discuss his career, goals and advice to offer aspiring students.

Could you tell us a bit about your practice in both adult and paediatric otolaryngology in hospitals across Sydney?

A lot of ENT is paediatric, given the significant amount of tonsillar disease and middle ear disease in childhood. So, my practice is probably 70% paediatric, which is fantastic. What I love about kids is that they widen your perspective. Most kids will have two parents, a family and extended relatives who are all impacted by the health of that child. So your first port of call is the child but eventually you end up treating the whole family, you get to become part of that network and they feel safe around you. It’s really taught me that if you’re honest with your patients and treat them well, they will treat you well in return. Word of mouth is the best form of referral. You don’t have to spend a lot of money setting up fancy webpages, all you have to do is be hard-working, honest, ethical and be compassionate. Then people will naturally gravitate towards you, because you do a good job, and you care.

“...if you’re honest with your patients and treat them well, they will treat you well in return. Word of mouth is the best form of referral. ”

Could you describe the role some early mentors played in your development as a surgeon?

Oh look, they were immense really. If you have a mentor that can show a bit of interest in you, then you do feel more valuable in the scheme of things. Sometimes as a student, you can feel as though you don't have much to offer. That everything is a one-way transaction. But I think most surgeons now recognise the two-way relationship, that they actually learn from the students. But just being made to feel part of that group, and breaking down those barriers was really beneficial. It shows you how to respect people, but also how to earn that respect in return.

How did you go about finding those opportunities?

In many ways it’s somewhat serendipitous, but when we started doing medicine and surgery in the hospital we would have exposure to consultant surgeons, whether staff specialists or VMOs, who would take our tutorials. They would always be available if you wanted to spend more time with them. The surgeons who were better communicators, and more approachable would be the ones you’d naturally gravitate towards. So you’d go and grab the operating list for the following day and try and track down the patients to get to know them before the surgeon did his rounds the following morning. Then you’d be quizzed by the surgeon on the patient and they’d spend a good deal of time going through some interesting cases with you.

So you have to be fairly active in that role of finding your own opportunities?

You do, so if you’re a passive kind of person, then you might not necessarily engender yourself towards that surgical sub-specialty. Because I think most surgeons are proactive, they like to make decisions and then enact on it. And so I saw more passive personalities not necessarily being drawn to that surgical pathway.

“Take your time. There’s always going to be opportunities, you just don’t know when. I think if you plot out your course too rigorously, you’re going to be a little disappointed.”

Could you tell me a little bit about how you became interested in ENT surgery specifically?

I remember having this question asked to me for my interview to do ENT training, and I look back at it with a bit of cringe in fact. I mean, as a kid I had my adenoids removed and the fact that you could perform surgery through an orifice with no scars was pretty amazing!

When I did my anatomy training, there were parts of the body which I thought were just amazing. The smaller and more intricate it was, the more it fascinated me. And having relatively small hands, and not an overly burly physique, I knew that I wasn’t going to be an orthopaedic surgeon. I liked plastics, but when I got to ENT, I thought “Ear, Nose and Throat”, three things that are somehow wackily connected, and it was just a very niche area that not many people had considered as an area to work in. We were always going to be part of that new frontier, things were going to become more specialised, be minimally-invasive, it was going to be about quality of life versus quantity of life. And, you know, there was also a little bit of lifestyle to factor in as well. There weren’t going to be too many emergencies, not like a burst AAA in the middle of the night or a bypass graft with a pericardial effusion. I thought, yeah, ENT is very good and very select.

I think a lot of medical students have this fear that surgery is very difficult to get into, and ‘there’s no point in trying because I’m just going to fail’.

I would say that you shouldn’t be discouraged by that. Set your goal and be methodical about it, just work towards it. The more exposure you have, the more tortuous the route you take, the better the person you are at the end of the day. So I would say to anyone that wants to do surgery, don’t think it’s too hard, things have definitely changed since my day. If you want to do surgery, go for it.

Any final words?

One thing I would say is: take your time. There’s always going to be opportunities, you just don't know when. I think if you plot out your course too rigorously, you’re going to be a little disappointed. So be open-minded and go where the journey leads you, and that’s part of the fun. 

UNSW Surgical Society would like to thank Dr Taplin for his contribution and wise words.