Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite explains why it’s important to take the opportunity to influence your world with responsibilities beyond your day-to-day work.
“The world is changing. People, especially busy academics and researchers, are juggling many responsibilities. Ever since Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock, way back in 1970, there has been futurists a-plenty promising life would speed up and become increasingly challenging.
As no colleague I know here on campus seems less busy than they were only a few short years ago, the question arises: why take on extra work?
Why become for example, as I have done recently, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, and take up the role of President Elect of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a body involved with influencing health systems in over 100 countries and supporting their efforts to provide more high quality, safe care for patients?
In a nutshell, the answer is making a wider contribution to my discipline and the world.
I’m already a fellow of several academies and colleges, but the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, although newly established, has a self-confessed mission of providing “an impartial and authoritative voice for healthcare, informed by the best available evidence and expert advice from the best and brightest in health and medical research.”
The Academy also supports the “development of future generations of health and medical researchers”. It facilitates some of my own goals, but from a position of great strength, as a collective. And, in an era of disrespect in some quarters for science and evidence, it raises the importance of these to the very highest levels of society and government.
ISQua’s mission, a more avowedly international one, is to “inspire and drive improvement in the quality and safety of healthcare worldwide through education and knowledge sharing, external evaluation, supporting health systems and connecting people through global networks”. It allows me, my fellow Board members, its international expert network, and individual and institutional members to make far-reaching contributions to low, middle and high-income countries, and to link up with programs of support for improved health systems including those provided by the WHO, EU, ASEAN, and others.
Sure, joining these bodies is more work and responsibility. My life, like colleagues everywhere, is full to the brim already. But isn’t that why we are academics, researchers, and Macquarie University staff?
We’re here to make a difference; to go the extra mile. This is what makes me get up in the morning: to help through my research and advocacy to make things just a little better than they were yesterday for those who come to us for their care.”
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is founding director and proud member of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University.
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I think normalising overwork (“But isn’t that why we are academics, researchers, and Macquarie University staff?”) is unhealthy for individuals and counter-productive to a friendly and cohesive work environment. There is considerable scientific literature from organisational and health psychology showing negative impacts for workplaces, employees and the families of people who take on more work when their life is already ‘full to the brim’.
Many academics, particularly early career researchers, feel overwhelmed by self imposed pressure to do more work. On the one hand it is wonderful to have examples of high achieving senior colleagues to look up to, but there is also a real cost to the constant feeling of needing to do more.
I congratulate Professor Braithwaite for his stellar achievements but I do not think this is a useful way to talk about them.
I’m surprised this was published and do not think it sends a helpful message to the University.