Dave: Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of my podcast about resilience, Today we've got a special guest professor Tim Geraghty who is the director of the Hopkins centre. He was involved in rehabilitation medicine for 25 years and was the director of the Queensland Spinal Cord injuries from 1999 to 2009. He received the academic title of Professor from Griffith University in 2014 I'll now hand you over to Tim how are you going today Tim: I'm very good David thanks very much for inviting me to be involved in the podcast Dave: can you just enlighten us a bit what is your background and what is the Hopkins centre Tim: ok sure you did a pretty good job of introducing me in the beginning my name is Tim Geraghty I’m a Rehabilitation medicine doctor I've been working in the clinical area for the whole of my career of about 30 years since of being in the area of spinal cord injury rehabilitation I was the director of the spinal injuries unit at the PA hospital for about 10 years and then I continued to work in the spinal injuries unit I've also had management leadership jobs in the PA hospital in that role as well as services in spinal cord injury I looked after brain injury rehabilitation services and persistent pain chronic pain services and some other areas as well so that's what I did for most of the 25 years during that time I’ve always done a little bit of research along the way but it was hard to do a lot of research because I was so busy doing other things but then in 2016 we have the opportunity to set up the Hopkins Centre so the Hopkins centre is a collaboration between the PA hospital metro South Health and particularly the areas of rehabilitation that always I have been involved in so the ones that I just mentioned such as spinal cord injuries brain injuries chronic pain but also some other areas of rehabilitation and we joined up with Elizabeth Kendall and her very experienced team of academic researchers at Griffith University so we came together to create the Hopkins centre in about 2017. In fact Elizabeth and her team had been working with various members of the team really around 20 years before we officially became the Hopkins centre in 2017 and the idea was to bring the very experienced academic researchers at Griffith university together with the clinicians and clinical researchers looking after people with disabilities and dealing with rehabilitation at the PA hospital as well as those with lived experiences with disabilities we tried to involve them in our research as much as possible essentially we do disabilities and rehabilitation type research across those areas that I mentioned. Dave: How many people are involved in the Hopkins centre Tim: if your talking about people on the payroll then its a relatively small group around 25, Most of those people are at Griffith University and some at the PA hospital but we have over 400 people who are members of the Hopkins centre and many of those are clinicians who work directly with people with spinal cord injuries and directly with people with disability on a daily basis and then a whole lot of other researchers, other people who are interested in the work that we do. So when we send out our newsletter every month it goes to 400 people or more. Dave: I receive the newsletter every month or so and now I've come across the dignity project could you explain a little bit more about that Tim: Sure the dignity project is a really important part of the work that the Hopkins centre does, a lot of the work is done through Griffith it includes the futures Over the last few years and it's not an area that I work in a lot on a day to day basis but certainly other people in our team do Elizabeth Kendall and Kelsey Chapman is the research fellow that works in the dignity project and the dignity project covers a number of different areas but it's really focused on working closely with people who have a disability and people who got the lived experience of various types of disability and working to make sure that rehabilitation and other aspects of working with people with disability are always done in a dignified way in which puts the person with the disability at the centre of the whole process so it's not just health professionals or academics working away and doing things it's making sure that the people with the disability who have got the lived experience themselves on what they've been through are really at the centre of all of the research that we're doing and so every project really that we do involves people with lived experience of disability as part of the research team Dave: What's the age demographic of the people with disabilities is there more elderly people or what's your experience Tim: it depends a bit on the type of disability that you're talking about, disability can really happen to anyone at any age. At the Hopkins centre we don't really deal directly with children who've got disability most of the people we work with are adults the community in general is getting older and so there are certainly a lot of people who get a disability when they are older whether it's from a stroke or some sort of injury but there's also people who are quite young who get disability as well so it's really very variable. Dave: Do you find that you have more success with younger people or have you had a lot of success with people who are older as well Tim: Again it probably varies a bit exactly on what type of disability you're talking about but certainly just because someone is older when they have their disability doesn't mean at all that they can't do well in their recovery and their rehabilitation so sometimes if people are older they might have other illnesses or other problems that might make it a bit harder and difficult but there is certainly no rule that says if you're older you won't do well. Dave: What does resilience mean to you and have you witnessed any great stories about resilience during your career Tim: that's a really good question and resilience is not a simple thing to define necessarily but I think mostly we understand resilience as meaning the ability that people have to deal with difficult or challenging things that have happened in their lives do they have the ability to cope with what's happened and to bounce back, be able to get on with their lives, and I think that's again something that's variable from person to person and there's no set way that that happens or time frame that it's happening in and I think some of us have a lot of resilience and some of us don't have as much resilience to be able to cope or to deal with difficult things that have happened in our lives. Some people do it more quickly some people do it at a slower pace for example people working in a rehabilitation ward or unit take into account as people are going through the recovery process as far as resilience in action if you like I suppose in this case I would probably draw on my experience as a doctor as I say mostly in the area of having a spinal cord injury without singling out people I think that there are many many stories I can remember of people who have gone on to lead very fulfilling lives after they've had a spinal injury in this spinal injury area we often get to see people and do check ups and follow ups on them for many years after they've had their injury sometimes you're lucky enough to know people and follow what's happening in their lives for 20 or 30 years and so during that time you see many many people who are doing their ultimate best to get on with their lives and to be as resilient as possible it can be a very fulfilling area to work in. That's not to say that people don't have struggles and have all sorts of adversity that they're trying to deal with at various points of their lives and that's what we try to help them with as well. Dave: A study that I did a few years back I learned about habits and I thought that's probably helped me during my recovery, I've got reasonable habits and the ability to keep doing them that's what success is all about in my view that you just need to keep doing exercise and keep moving Tim: I think exercise or keeping moving and the idea of keeping moving is probably a very important one for many people but I think it's also finding the aspect of your life or some people it might be exercised for other people it might be gardening or it might be going to watch a football match or something like that so I think it's probably different for different people but it's about finding the thing that you're really interested in and passionate about and keeping going with those kind of things no matter if your life has changed a bit and you may be less mobile or you may be having particular problems because of what's happened to you if you can find something that's fulfilling and interesting and you're passionate about them that really helps to keep you on track. Dave: Now lastly unless there’s anything further you would like to add what is the future of the Hopkins Centre Tim: that's a good question too David we're always thinking about our future like most research centres we have various people and organizations that support us with funding and resources to allow us to keep going and every so often we need to talk to those people about getting additional resources so we can keep doing more research and keep going we certainly hope that the Hopkins Centre will continue to be around for a long time where every once in awhile we want to look at the types of research that we're doing in particular areas of research that we're interested in make sure we're doing research that is valuable thinking about new areas to do research and branch out into, it would be great to have a few more hands on the ground a few more people who can help us to do even more research in particular areas. We're always looking around for other people that we can work with and grants that we can apply for so they are the kind of things that we're looking for in the future we certainly hope and plan to be around for as long as we possibly can. Dave: That's wonderful do you have any final thoughts or have you said it all Tim: I think that's pretty much it, probably just to emphasize again that one of the things that we tried to do is to work with people that have had the experience of having disability and create teams of researchers that have people with disability and have clinicians and help professionals as well as having academic university researchers all working together so that we can try and do great research and get great outcomes that will improve the lives of people with disability and try to continue to make improvements that will make their lives better. Dave: That's wonderful Tim and I'm certainly very keen to be involved in the Hopkins centre in the future Tim: We are often looking for people particularly Dave you're aware Of the dignity project Which does work absolutely very closely with people who have a disability themselves and they are often looking for people who can help be involved in research and things like that so we are on the lookout for people that we can do research with including people who've had a disability themselves Dave: Thanks for your time Tim it's been wonderful to talk with you about the Hopkins centre and have a good day Tim: Great David and thanks for the invitation to be involved I'll look forward to catching up with you soon Dave: thanks Tim