To know PA Hospital’s Dr Brian Bell is to be impressed by his intelligence, experience, multitude of talents in many diverse fields, general knowledge, energy, and his tireless efforts to get the job done.
Brian has been the Executive Director of Medical Services at PA Hospital for six and a half years, wearing the same hat at both Redland and Logan hospitals prior to that with almost a decade of service to Metro South Health within his decades long career as a medico.
Executive Director of Princess Alexandra Hospital, Dr Jeremy Wellwood first worked with Brian at the Gold Coast Hospital.
“His role for many years has been advocating for and giving a voice to some of the most vulnerable people in our community. This includes consumers on committees, open disclosure and conciliation with patients and their families, complaints management, and working alongside Queensland Corrective Services for the appropriate medical treatment of prisoners in the healthcare setting,” Dr Wellwood said.
“One of the great successes for his EDMS portfolio at PAH is the achievements of the Queensland Tissue Bank. Brian has worked with the team on a complete revision of how the services are provided resulting in available bone, skin, and eye tissue for thousands and thousands of people while simultaneously becoming a profitable business.”
Every day of the week for Brian involves resolving patient transfers, guiding the education of medical trainees, sorting out issues affecting the medical cohort and responding to everyday operational challenges affecting a 24/7 large-scale hospital. All the while, he manages these stressful situations with dignity, compassion, and respect.
Colleagues across PA attest to the human side of Brian and his ability to connect with people on topics of interest to them, drawing from his incredible general knowledge to share tips, insights, skills and even gifts for the children of co-workers which speaks to his focus on being a human first and foremost and bringing a personal approach to his work with people.
It is this side of Brian that most will mention in personal reflection. Aside from his busy clinical and administration life, Brian is frenetic in his extracurricular activities. He is an avid participant on the park run circuit including the odd marathon, can be found at cooking classes or the theatre on alternate nights and is fluent in Italian – proudly wearing his language badge for ‘Italiano’ as part of the Metro South Health ‘we speak your language’ project.
In fact, there are so many facets to Brian he needs his own ‘little known facts about Brian’ segment:
- Brian has worked as a doctor in almost every state in Australia – after a false start to his intern year in the Northern Territory (thanks to Cyclone Tracy), Brian did the rounds from Tasmania to South Australia, to Western Australia, Victoria, then coming ‘home’ to Queensland with gigs at the Gold Coast, Redland, Logan and PAH.
- Brian met his wife Dr Jan Cullen, who is now a paediatrician at Logan Hospital, over test tubes in the chemistry lab during training in Queensland. This set the course of their training placements and specialist appointments in states all over Australia which were coordinated for each other’s benefit.
- As a surgical trainee in WA, Brian dipped his toe into the world of IT, undertaking an elective in an antiquated computer language – and loved it so much that he took a few years off to study computer science and Mathematics. This resulted in him being offered an internship at MIT in Boston.
- He didn’t do the internship because his wife was unwell in her pregnancy so they transitioned to Victoria where he undertook his first job in medical administration and their eventual family of five children started.
- Brian’s powers of influence resulted in St Vincent’s Hospital purchasing their first PC. The result was that he wrote the first computer program in Australia to computerise an elective surgery waiting list. This enabled the list to be sorted according to surgical specialty, clinician, level of urgency, in order to prioritise our work for the first time. Previous to this, the waiting list was on little cards which were filed alphabetically requiring the registrars to sort through and find the person with little knowledge of what they were having, and no concept of how many people were on the list, what they were waiting for, and how long they had been waiting. Hello Medical journal of Australia!
- His inspiration for learning Italian in his Perth years was influenced purely by the large Italian community present in WA. It all started with ‘Italian 101’ developing into a love affair with all things Italy.
- You’d think with all of this zeal for education that Brian would have come from a long line of academics – in fact, he was the only member of the entire tribe of 50 cousins to go on to tertiary education.
While Brian’s decision to retire this month seems more than well-deserved, it is hardly a reality given he will continue his work as a surveyor for the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards, and maybe his threat to join the cohort of octogenarian volunteers at the hospital isn’t just lip service after all.
For Brian, the man who is always on time, who always has the right thing to say at the right time, and has a special way with comedic timing, this second attempt at retirement is coming at the right time.
“I tell the junior doctors at orientation that they will look back on their time at PA with pride and fondness and I can certainly say that for myself too,’ he said. “The camaraderie and the attention to detail in the care of patients has been wonderful and I know I will miss PA.”