Carlton Irving reflects on his time as an Otago medical student.
E kore te tangata e pakari i te māhanga i a ia anake (a person cannot become strong by remaining in their comfort zone).
If you want to see where hard work and determination can get you, look no further than Otago Medical School graduand Carlton Irving.
For the past six years, Carlton (Te Whakatōhea, Te Ūpokorehe) has worked up to 100-hour weeks, often surviving on 4-5 hours’ sleep a night as he juggled full-time work and a whānau while training to be a doctor.
“Doing medicine for me has been like running a marathon at a sprint pace,” he says.
Carlton graduates with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MB ChB) in Dunedin tomorrow.
With more than 20 years’ experience in the health sector, Carlton was a critical care paramedic before moving into healthcare leadership and medical practice.
As a paramedic, he saw firsthand the effect of health inequities. This led to him wanting to champion change for Māori health and, ultimately, to his decision to become a doctor.
“If you see a problem and you walk past it, then you become part of the problem. I’ve always believed that if I can help, I should.”
A self-described “high school dropout”, Carlton, originally from Ōpōtiki, says he didn’t come from a privileged background and university was never on the cards.
However, following other tertiary study, he started his medical training in Dunedin at age 40 and as a father of five.
Now based in Hawke’s Bay, he and wife Jaime have seven tamariki between them, and he will shortly be starting work as a part-time house officer, while keeping his current full-time role as the Director of Māori Health and Consumer at Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission. This position centres on amplifying the voices of Māori and other under-represented communities in healthcare.
Carlton has also held key roles such as Chief of Allied Health at Te Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority), and he is the inaugural chair of Te Kaunihera Manapou (Paramedic Council).
He believes this unusual combination of experience gives him an interesting insight into Aotearoa’s health sector and models of care.
Carlton Irving (centre), who graduates with an MB ChB tomorrow, celebrates his achievement with his whānau (from left) father Peter, wife Jaime, mother Moana and aunty Hemaima Hughes.
With health workforce shortages, and the high cost of studying medicine being prohibitive for some, Carlton wants the sector to be asking questions such as whether medical students could do some paid work while they train like the “earn while you learn” initiatives in other health areas.
He would also like to see discussion about whether the degree should take six years and, having taken part in the Rural Medical Immersion Programme, whether more of the medical education programme could be delivered in rural areas and online, rather than physically on the three main campuses – Ōtepoti Dunedin, Ōtautahi Christchurch and Pōneke Wellington.
“I believe positive disruptors are key to a better health system. If you want to change things, you need to be inside the tent.
“We need to do better on a lot of fronts. I think of it as being guided by our tīpuna (ancestors) and driven by our mokopuna (descendants).”
Motivated by the need to improve things for vulnerable communities, Carlton says there’s no healthcare system without a workforce, and the workforce is all the people who are contributing, not just clinical staff like doctors, nurses, allied health – we need administrators, communications, IT and all the other people who are often the glue who hold things together.
“No one is more or less important than anyone else. We’re all symbiotically linked – it’s an ecosystem.”
Carlton hopes his unconventional path to medicine will help others realise what’s possible. He says medicine is not unattainable nor unachievable, getting through is about “pure work ethic”.
He discourages other students from putting in “unhealthy” 100-hour weeks, but warns that studying medicine does test your rigour.
“Health Sciences First Year is a sharp start, but the hill doesn’t get any less steep. But if you put the time in, it’s really rewarding.”
Carlton acknowledged former Dunedin School of Medicine Dean Professor Jo Baxter, Kōhatu – Centre for Hauora Māori Professor Peter Crampton and Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen as having a significant influence on his decisions and direction.
They helped him realise what was possible and that “everyone goes into the health sector with a heart of service”.
Looking back over his med student days, Carlton says it was one of the toughest, but most rewarding periods of his life. He thanked his wife Jaime for being the core of the support network that has seen him though these difficult but satisfying years.
“Hopefully, I’ve planted a tree that fruits for many others.”
Read an earlier story about Carlton
Kōrero by Andrea Jones, Team Leader, Divisional Communications