An Interview with Dr. Katie Gault - General Practitioner at The Neighbourhood Clinic

Thanks for coming in Katie, the purpose of this interview is to give our community more of an idea of who you are and what type of doctor you are.

What drew you to medicine?

I actually wanted to be a vet. As a child I loved animals but as I grew older and realised that the animals couldn’t answer my questions I was less sure about the Vet pathway.

Once I learnt that a lot of what a VET had to do was euthanise animals the path toward Medicine became clearer and clearer.

So animals not replying lead to a biomedical science degree which lead to the medical program at Melbourne University. What lead to your choice of General Practice as a speciality?

The breadth of work and people that a General Practitioner gets to work with is what drew me in.

Helping people with mental health issues, working with women through the various phases of their lives, children, as well as the bread and butter of GP like viruses, aches and pains etc.

What can someone expect from their time with you?

A good chat, a holistic whole person approach, I will ask all the little facts about you that may be relevant, from what you ate for breakfast to the name of your dog.

One of my focusses is to determine what is occurring and why rather than just prescribing a medication.

Could you give us a rundown of a standard day for you?

I start every day with a high intensity interval training session. I then race home for a #superfood smoothie with spinach, protein powder and an assortment of berries as well as some lemon and turmeric water.

Once I’ve settled then I get on my bike and ride to work. And then my day really kicks in.

I could be seeing someone in need of a script repeat, to someone that needs to have a cry, to someone in an emergency situation to a new born baby to a middle aged male taking an active interest in their health to a pregnant woman needing to know a whole lot more of what they are stepping into.

This is more for my own interests but I’d like to know more of your perspective on the future of medicine, how it may change, what is already changing and how that affect people?

That is not a small question and I don’t really know how to answer it.

Currently I am excited by how much we are learning about gut biome and it’s relationship to mental health. How the fuel that we put into our bodies can influence one’s health.

I am interested in meditation, mindfulness, yoga and daily movement and how they can be incorporated into health prevention programs.

More broadly we are seeing changes in technology that are better and better at fixing things. But we are also seeing greater and greater dependence on technology amongst people.

Being too wired to your technology, being too engaged with social media and being too influenced by social media are new issues that we haven’t had to deal with in the past.

So in a roundabout way to answer your question I see technology helping us in Medicine enormously but I can also see issues in the way that we engage with technology and how we use it more broadly than just in medicine.

And I didn’t mention it but also, google driven diagnoses….

Ok enough medical chat, if you weren’t a doctor what you be doing?

I would love to be a full time artist, or something in the design world like architecture or just someone that is creating something every single day.

Or a vet that didn't have to euthanise animals….

Who are your heroes?

Hilma af Klint was a Swedish classicist artist, naturalist, mystic of the 1900’s is one of my favourite people. She was the founder of abstract expressionism.

In 1906, aged 44, she began producing art that was so far from the norm of the time that her contemporaries (such as Rudolph Steiner) were so unimpressed that she decided not to show it again.

And so she kept it secret but kept making this art. To make money doing the normal landscapes and portraits but then putting her soul into this new form of art.

When she died she left a series of paintings under lock and key that wasn’t to be opened until 20 years after her death.

And wow, what art it is.

Aside from her I love Marukami the author, Sonia Grover the adolescent gynaecology expert, Florence Nightingale, Jane Goodall and Fred Hollows.

To finish off with, could you give us some general health tips that most of us could follow? Cook everything from scratch as much as possible.

Drink 2-3 litres of water per day.

Make sure you are puffing at least once a day, deliberate heart racing is important each day.

Sleep well.

Be present.

Laugh daily and surround yourself with people that laugh.

Fitzroy General Practitioner Dr Katie Gault is available for bookings at The Neighbourhood Clinic. Click here for more INFO or to BOOK ONLINE.