85. From fashion inspo to the COVID frontline
Dr Ambi Sud's hilarious, vibrant social media profile isn't what you might expect from a doctor - it's gorgeous feminine fashion, bright lipstick and female empowerment to the max. In this episode Ambi explains the importance of showing up as yourself, even if it ruffles a few feathers! She also takes us through the voice & speech challenges that come with COVID PPE - and offers some pro sore-throat hacks!
Follow Dr Ambi Sud on instagram @drambisud.
Transcript
Sally:
Welcome back to That Voice Podcast. Woohoo! Big welcome. I have not been here for two weeks. I was busy focusing on getting My Six Week Voice Makeover underway. You know, I probably could have got episodes out for you, but I've been guilty of putting too many things on my plate. Probably my whole life. Maybe you can relate. So I'm really glad I gave myself some breathing room. And perhaps you need to hear this today that yes, you have permission to give yourself breathing room, take things off your plate. Say no to a few things, relax a little bit and don't even feel guilty about it.
Sally:
So I'm feeling very rested. And look, part of the reason for that is I had corporate workshops planned for Sydney and Melbourne, which had to be postponed because of COVID travel restrictions. And so I had a bit of time pop up in my diary that I wasn't expecting. Now, speaking of COVID, today's guest is Dr. Ambi Sud. Now Dr. Ambi Sud is an emergency doctor who's dealing with COVID on the front line. It can be really hard to communicate with patients at the best of times, with things like being hard of hearing, vision impairment, a language barrier, perhaps. And if you're seeing an emergency doctor, you're probably pretty stressed. So, add to that all the PPE, the suit, the mask, the plastic shield, and it is a real challenge, which Ambi explains, you know, how do you ensure that you're heard and understood beneath all that? You'll find out.
Now, the other reason I wanted to chat to Ambi is, she's not your typical doctor. She is a fashion queen and empowers women through her social media. Often I'm watching her Instagram stories to see how I could better condition my hair, something I definitely need to do. Ambi's also incredibly fit. That's how we met— by me trying to keep up with her at InspireCycle.
But first, quick question. Are your speaking skills holding you back in your business or career? Or are they sailing you forward? Are you thrown into speaking situations with no idea what the hell to do? Are you struggling to have influence to get your message heard across the meeting table or through the camera lens? If this is you, I would really love to invite you to join my membership community, Members Only. It is packed with practical tips about all aspects of voice and presentation. I hold monthly events, including master classes, hot seat coaching and open mic, which is your chance to practice your upcoming speech or run something by me. We're on our own Mighty Networks app, so you're off the noise of social media and you get an instant fan club, led of course by me. And if you join yearly or lifetime, I also ship out a welcome gift to you. So, stop flying blind and hoping for the best when it comes to your voice and speaking, join us in Members Only. The link is in the show notes or head to sallyprosser.com.au to join us!
Okay, let's dive into today's episode.
Sally:
Dr. Ambi Sud, it is such a pleasure to welcome you to That Voice Podcast.
Ambi:
Thank you so much for having me, Sally.
Sally:
Kick off. Just give us a bit of a rundown of who you are and what you do.
Ambi:
Of course. So my name is Ambi, I'm British. If the accent did not give me away. But I'm actually based here in Brisbane in Queensland. I moved here nearly four years ago. I'm a doctor. I graduated from medical school in 2015, worked in the UK for a few years and then moved over to Australia and have not looked back. I've obviously stayed. I started my social media 6 to 12 months ago, posting lots of fashion lots of female empowerment type things. Sally's even being a guest on my Instagram TV series for empowering girls and young women. And yeah, that's kind of my background, I guess. I currently work in emergency medicine. I also work within COVID clinics. So yeah.
Sally:
Such an interesting combination. I love your Instagram bio. Doctor who likes to dress up, fashion inspo and female empowerment. I definitely need all of those things.
Ambi:
Yeah. It's a bit different for a doctor, but it's a nice hobby to have on the side and it's really good.
Sally:
And what was the inspiration behind branding your page that way?
Ambi:
I think as a young woman, who's studying medicine that is quite a kind of male-dominated field. I felt a little bit at medical school. Like I couldn't really embrace that femininity and fashion and girly things that I enjoyed, and was quite often discouraged from doing so. So I actually had a little blog where I'd post beauty reviews and that kind of thing when I was a medical student and I was really actively discouraged from doing it. I still did it, but I think part of the thing of getting older as well and being in my thirties is that I honestly don't care and this is me. So despite the fact that I still occasionally will get some discouragement, I just kind of wanted to show young women and not even specifically women, just young people in general, I guess. That you don't have to have this sort of academic in "career", not be yourself. You can like things that are a bit silly, or a bit frivolous, or like a bit of lipstick or whatever it doesn't, you know, it doesn't impinge on you as a doctor in my case, but just wanted people to embrace their, themselves ready and be true to themselves. And that's kind of why, I guess I made a point of putting out on my Instagram by rather than putting emergency medicine doctor and that kind of thing. So.
Sally:
Yeah, I love that. And I can totally relate because I do a lot of silly things, love height glasses, and red lips and dancing and that sort of thing. And in no way, does that take away from my professionalism or competence in what I do. And I love that we are starting to challenge these age-old definitions of what it means to be professional or knowledgeable or all these other perceptions. And I'm guessing, I don't know for sure. Who were these people who were discouraging you from going down that path?
Ambi:
It was a lot of older, well, I guess, older in the sense of more senior, not necessarily age, but older doctors, both male and female, actually. It was never more heavily male or anything. That kind of wanted me to fulfill the stereotype of wearing black, wearing black and white now, but you know, I'm wearing monotoned and not wearing bright colors and not wearing bright lipsticks and that sort of thing. So it was that sort of older more senior clinician, but yeah, that was kind of the sort of person that generally would discourage me. And I did get the odd comment from patients and things as well, but it was never actually that negative. It was just sort of like, oh, "I've never seen a doctor like you or a medical student like you. Where I'm coming in and Canary yellow with pink lipstick on." And you know, that kind of thing. So it was a mix really. Yeah.
Sally:
I love that. And keeping in mind as well, I guess the people who do discourage and criticize even they're just going on their experiences that they've had in their lives. And I guess the medical industry, like many others are changing with the times.
Ambi:
I think people have sort of our parents' generation and even 10, 20 years older than us had this thing of sort of male clinician or doctor in a white lab coat, you know, wearing a suit and a tie. And that's just not the way it is now where it's 2021 things have changed quite a lot. There's a lot more women in medicine amongst other things. So, you know, I think we have to embrace that. And as you say, move forward with the times.
Sally:
Yeah, absolutely love it. Let's take, let's change tack a little bit. Oh my goodness. That's a bit of a tongue twister, isn't it? Let's change tack. I would love to talk about voice. So first of all, as a doctor, do you have any good hacks for us if we've got a bit of a sore throat?
Ambi:
Well, in the midst of a pandemic, I'm going to have to start with the party line that if you have a sore throat, you should probably get a COVID swab and just check that there's nothing infections going on. So that's the first thing that I'm going to first and foremost, moving on from that, basic simple pain relief things like Paracetamol, Nurofen are really good for sore throats and actually keeping your throat really lubricated and hydrated. So whether that's with lots of fluids, warm or cold, whatever you prefer. And even lozenges and that sort of thing, are good for actually helped lubricating the throat and the vocal cords and things. So those are probably the main things really. I quite like salt water gargles as well. I'm not sure how medically good they are, but for me, they're quite good when I've got a sore throat that I'll use a bit of cool down kettle water with some salt in it and just gargle, and that will often help.
Sally:
Love it. Great tips. My go-tos are Betadine sore, throat gargle and Manuka honey.
Ambi:
Oh yeah. I mean, honey, teas and that sort of thing are quite helpful as well. And Manuka honey has lots of antibacterial bodies, products. Sorry. So yeah, good ones.
Sally:
Voice care is something that cannot be overstated enough. It's really important to take care of our voice in the same way that we should try to take care of the rest of our body. Although Ambi, I couldn't get to Inspire this week because of lockdown. So that's my excuse for no exercise this week! Ambi and I know each other because we cycled together and be a lot more proficiently than I, but it is a good workout. Okay. So what about when you're speaking to patients, I'd imagine that a lot of the time they're feeling quite stressed, especially in emergency, how do you speak, do you adopt any vocal techniques to help calm the situation and make the patient feel more at ease?
Ambi:
Of course. So I think there's a couple of things that we need to consider. And I'm going to almost talk about pre and post pandemic because the addition of PPE makes things that much harder with communicating to your patients. So for those of you that don't know, PPE is the medical grade Protective Personal Equipment that we wear when we're speaking to patients that have respiratory symptoms and, or they've got confirmed, COVID, I'll come back to that in a second. I mean there's lots of elements, obviously things like body language are a big part of when you're speaking to a patient. Communication, this sort of language using. How you speak, I'm an absolute sucker of speaking really fast. So I have to be really mindful when I'm talking to patients that I don't speak too fast. I enunciate really clearly, don't use medical jargon.
Ambi:
You know, we doctors will throw around medical terms that the average lay person in the street, what doesn't know. So you have to be very careful with the language in terms of the voice, I guess, making sure you're well heard. So whether that's in a quiet environment, sometimes the emergency department does not lend itself well to that, so I'm sure you can imagine. Lots of drunk people screaming on a Friday night, and that kind of thing, but I think making sure you're in as quiet and calm an environment as possible, particularly when it comes to breaking sensitive or bad news. Giving time when you're talking actually. So actually, lack of voice and not talking is really important. So sometimes just giving the patient 10, 20, even 30 seconds to collect their thoughts when you've delivered a piece of news. And using that kind of lack of speech as a way for them to collect their thoughts, you don't have to constantly be talking to convey empathy and that kind of thing. Other things, you know, when you get aggressive patients and things you have to try and remain calm, you can't, as you know, if you're working in customer service and that sort of thing, it's similar in that sense.
Ambi:
So you have to be careful with how you use your voice. Like I said, in those sorts of instances, particularly in emergency where you can get patients that are aggressive, they might be psychiatric patients. They might be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. So I think I've definitely improved my communication skills from working within emergency medicine. As I mentioned earlier, the whole dynamic of wearing PPE in a pandemic adds a whole another layer to it because I mentioned all the things with body language. Well, when you're gowned up, you've got a mask up to your pretty much your eyes, your eyebrows are covered. You've literally got your eyes to talk with and your voice, you don't really have body language cause you can't get too close to a patient. You have to stay quite far back. They often can't hear you. So you have to enunciate and be really, really clear with your words. And then the power of voice is really important in a pandemic when you are gowned up and you don't have the luxury of body language and all the other things. So I think, definitely the pandemic again has added to that layer of doctor-patient communication and making sure you're really clear in how you speak to patients and how you're using your voice as well.
Sally:
Yeah. How have you found that having to be all in PPE? Have you found it quite disconnecting or are you used to it now? You've been there for a while.
Ambi:
Luckily in Australia where we don't have lots and lots of COVID cases, we do have some currently. You sort of don and doff your PPE. So you're not necessarily, it might differ department to department, but you're not necessarily in the PPE all shift. So we have got the luxury of taking it on and off occasionally. Yesterday, I worked within a COVID clinic. So we were swapping patients that had been exposed to Coronavirus that were low risk contacts or perhaps have symptoms. In which case, I spent eight hours of my day in PPE, without taking off apart from in between for lunch. So, a one hour break in the middle. It's hard, actually. When you're in it constantly, you're, it's uncomfortable. It's very sweaty. It's very humid, it's uncomfortable. They face mask creates a huge seal. With regards to communication to patients, the issue is that the seal means that enunciation and things are super important. Because it's not letting air in and out very well. You have to be really clear with when you're talking to and speak very slowly, because they can't hear you very well because they've got something covering your face. So speaking loudly and clearly, but I do find, I understand, of course it's important to wear, but it is difficult. Particularly when you've got hearing impaired patients or visually impaired patients and that kind of thing. So it's adding quite a lot of challenge to doctor-patient communication there, but it has to be done at the moment, of course. So it's something that we're adapting to, but I think spending all shift yesterday and it was definitely a bit of a eye-opener as to how difficult it's been for our kind of colleagues in the UK and other countries where COVID has really, really been awful.
Sally:
Oh Ambi, I really tip my hat to you. I think in Australia, we do forget that there are people like yourself who are putting on all the PPE and because they're not seeing it as much as in other countries.
Ambi:
Yeah.
Sally:
It's, as you say, also really brings that focus back to your speech and back to your voice that you might have taken for granted in the past. It's one of the techniques that I teach is the importance of having air in your voice because air in your voice is warmth. And that to connect with people you're supposed to imagine that you're sharing them with your air. Now, of course COVID ward, or even just generally around when you're not trying to transmit a virus, that's something that would not be wise to do.
Ambi:
No, of course.
Sally:
And even impossible to do once you've got the screen there. Oh, so a little bit of a philosophical question now, which might have changed since you've been working in the COVID ward, but what does your voice mean to you?
Ambi:
I think for me, using my voice in work, as I say is to try and convey as patients and to speak to patients as warmly and empathetically as I can. Outside of work and kind of with what I do on social media, it's very much to try and empower people to be themselves. And that's really important to me. I'm not shy of being myself, both at work and outside of work. You know, that's just me and I think I've always been quite outspoken about people that try and discourage particularly young medical students. I get a lot of young, female medical students who will send me messages that are really sad actually. Where they're saying, "Oh you know, I feel like I can't wear this to work. I can't say this thing," Or that kind of message where they're really discouraged from doing medicine. So if using my voice in the way that I do albeit on social media is encouraging people to just be themselves and you know, not give a hoot what people think and just be true to themselves. And that's kind of what I aim to do when I started my social media and started doing all my silly Instagram reels and things. So yeah.
Sally:
Oh, Ambi, love it! Be yourself and not give a hoot what people think.
Sally:
Yes, abosultely!
Sally:
So if anybody listening, medical student or otherwise would like to connect with you, what's the best way?
Ambi:
So, my handle is very imaginative, @drambisud. So all lowercase, all one word I'm on Instagram and TikToK currently. Yeah. So that's where you can find me and drop me a message or give me a follow up.
Sally:
Andy. Thank you so much for joining That Voice Podcast.
Ambi:
Thank you so much for having me on, Sally. Thank you.