Most doctors finish their intern year with no publications. Brandon Ziegenfuss has ten peer-reviewed papers on the shoulder, and he wrote most of them while he was still a medical student.

In this episode Kenneth Cutbush talks with Brandon, now a resident medical officer in Toowoomba, about a route into medicine that took considerably more than one attempt.

He spent his first thirteen years in Johannesburg before the family moved to Brisbane, where he went to St Peter's and swam and played cricket, coaching at his old school after he finished. He is open about the fact that his biomedical science GPA was good but not competitive, so he did an honours year and then a Master of Public Health to lift it to 6.8, and still needed several applications and several interviews to get a medical place.

He refused to buy any of the GAMSAT preparation courses that cost thousands of dollars, and instead worked out his own approach with a study partner. It worked.

The conversation covers his research: an anatomical project involving dissection and up to thirty contributors that remains the highlight of his research career, and a latarjet paper he has now presented internationally. It also covers the practical machinery of getting onto an orthopaedic training program in Australia. The GSSE, the newer orthopaedic MCQ exam that replaced the situational judgement test, and the portfolio-building that runs alongside all of it.

The line that stays with you is about the first weeks on the ward, being the first doctor to arrive at a MET call: in medicine you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. He is candid that he is still working on it.

His closing advice comes from cricket. You can fumble one ball. It is the next one that matters.

Chapters

  • 00:00 "Orthopaedics is all about restoring movement"
  • 00:30 Welcome, ten papers and an intern year
  • 01:37 Thirteen years in Johannesburg, then Brisbane
  • 02:20 Why the family left South Africa
  • 04:23 Cricket, swimming, javelin, and a shoulder interest
  • 04:48 Coaching at his old school
  • 05:27 Biomedical science, and a GPA that was not competitive enough
  • 06:01 Presenting at the United Nations in New York
  • 07:13 Joining the research team as COVID began
  • 07:35 Why a public health graduate could not find work in a pandemic
  • 08:00 The dissection project he is proudest of
  • 08:36 Engineering, law, or medicine
  • 09:31 Several applications and several interviews
  • 11:24 Refusing to pay for GAMSAT prep courses
  • 13:02 Four years of medicine in Sydney and Melbourne
  • 14:53 Why coming home to Queensland was harder than leaving
  • 15:43 What draws him to orthopaedics
  • 16:44 Why the shoulder specifically
  • 17:37 His own shoulder injury, just after turning 30
  • 19:20 Presenting the latarjet paper internationally
  • 20:46 What comes next in Toowoomba
  • 21:44 The GSSE and the new orthopaedic MCQ exam
  • 24:23 Getting comfortable being uncomfortable
  • 25:29 The current research portfolio
  • 26:41 Advice for postgraduate applicants to medicine
  • 27:29 "You can fumble one ball. It's the next one that matters."