ADHC2025
WORKSHOPS
Kick off the ADHC2025 by attending one of four insightful workshops. These workshops will be held on Thursday 27 November 2025 and run concurrently from 1:30pm to 4:30pm. Choose one of the four following workshops.
Speaker: Dr Paul Taylor
Workshop 1 – Optimising performance, meaningfulness and health – The hardiness advantage.
In this thought-provoking workshop, Paul will explore how you can adapt positively to the inevitable challenges that life throws at you and ultimately emerge stronger and better, with a higher level of performance that is deeply meaningful while recognising the need to prioritise health. This workshop will move from an understanding of the human stress response to the recognition of a range of evidence-based rituals interpreted from a neuroscience, psychology and physiology perspective. This is a practical workshop that moves from the mastering of these foundational concepts towards enabling the individual to optimise their mind, body and brain so as to effectively enhance personal and professional engagement with meaning.
Speakers: Dr Fiona Reilly and Dr Mariam Tokhi
Workshop 2 – Stories of Care and Creativity – Narrative Medicine.
Speaker: Dr Hilton Koppe
Workshop 3 -The healing power of writing – Why doctors should write.
As health practitioners we write stories every day. The medical record allows us to interpret our patients’ stories and document our medicalised response, but it has limited scope to allow us to express our own personal experience. Professional isolation, burnout, and compassion fatigue may occur if we do not process our responses to what is experienced at work. This light-hearted and fun workshop aims to help transform challenging patients into interesting people, and difficult situations into meaningful experiences. Participants will experience the use of reflective and expressive writing to help manage some of the more challenging aspects of their working lives, and to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a health practitioner. Bring humility, a sense of curiosity, and a pen. Potentially leave with:
- A tool for relieving, rather than re-living, life’s difficulties.
- A tool for building compassion.
- Re-ignition of a (potentially lost) passion for creativity
Speakers: Dr Jakqui Barnfield and Tracy Pickett
Workshop 4 – The stories we tell – Understanding the intersect between caring for our colleagues and the medicolegal landscape.
This interactive workshop explores how balancing support for colleagues and medico-legal responsibilities intersect in the medical profession. It invites participants to examine real-world stories and scenarios that reveal tensions between compassionate colleague support, duty of care, confidentiality, and legal obligations. Through facilitated discussion, case vignettes, and practical tools, attendees will learn strategies to recognise when to and how to have a supportive mental health conversation, engage appropriate escalation pathways (if required) while maintaining relational trust. The session emphasises trauma-informed communication, boundaries, and respectful approaches, and offers clear guidance on when to seek legal or clinical oversight.