The ADVANCE Round Table
Different perspectives. Shared curiosity. Better practice.
ADVANCE has always depended on the generosity of people who volunteer their time because they are passionate about education.
On average, more than 400 hours of collective work go into preparing a single ADVANCE session. That is only possible because of the willingness and enthusiasm of our trainees, consultants and invited experts, who believe that investing in education and in each other is worth their time.
Around our Round Table are clinicians who bring different backgrounds, interests, experiences and perspectives but who share a genuine curiosity about how and why we practise the way we do.
Click to learn about our Round Table members below.
Dr Harsh Dubey
Anaesthetist | Clinical innovator | Perpetually Busy Bee⌄
Anaesthetist | Clinical innovator | Perpetually Busy Bee⌄
Harsh is a Visiting Specialist Anaesthetist at Eastern Health and an extraordinarily busy private anaesthetist, with a background in cardiac anaesthesia. He brings an impressive breadth of clinical experience to the team and is equally at home across a wide range of anaesthetic subspecialties. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and has particular interests in point-of-care ultrasound and gastric ultrasound.
Harsh has been instrumental in ADVANCE over the past two years, generously dedicating a significant amount of his own time to helping organise and develop the program. His involvement has spanned sessions from thoracic anaesthesia with Professor Peter Slinger through to perioperative methadone and dexmedetomidine — agents he regularly incorporates into his own clinical practice.
Passionate about education and lifelong learning, Harsh is one of those people who quietly makes an enormous amount happen behind the scenes at ADVANCE. Exactly where he finds the time remains one of the great unanswered questions, presumably squeezed in somewhere between his fortieth clinical list of the week and the mysterious eighth day he appears to have access to.
Dr Kelly Jones
Staff Anaesthetist | Educator | Radio DJ in Another Life⌄
Staff Anaesthetist | Educator | Radio DJ in Another Life⌄
Kelly is a Staff Anaesthetist at Eastern Health and has generously co-chaired several ADVANCE sessions.
Vivacious, famously forthright and equipped with what may be the best radio voice in anaesthesia, Kelly has a gift for keeping conversations lively, honest and firmly on track.
She has supported ADVANCE across multiple programs and will co-chair our upcoming IARS dexmedetomidine session. Her collegiality, humour and enthusiasm for education make her an invaluable voice around the Round Table.
Beyond anaesthesia, Kelly is also an accomplished artist, having formally studied art, it was her artistic talent that brought the very first ADVANCE logo to life. Proving that the voice is not her only contribution to the arts.
Dr Stuart Watson
Staff Anaesthetist | Educator | Prize-Winning Brainiac⌄
Staff Anaesthetist | Educator | Prize-Winning Brainiac⌄
Stuart is a Staff Anaesthetist at Eastern Health, a regular ADVANCE co-chair and the brain behind Ketamine Nightmares.
Endlessly curious, Stuart brings a love of first-principles thinking*, vigorous discussion and the occasional dose of irreverence to the Round Table. He has co-chaired several ADVANCE sessions and has a particular talent for asking the question everyone else was thinking.
Having won the prize for the Primary Examination in his own year, Stuart now devotes considerable time to helping trainees navigate the notoriously dry world of Primary Exam preparation, somehow managing to make even that engaging.
He also has a thing for memes and has become instrumental in keeping our community connected between sessions, helping create many of the regular posts and updates that reach ADVANCE subscribers.
*at the expense of evidence.
Dr Rebecca Zhao
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Nurturer at Heart⌄
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Nurturer at Heart⌄
Rebecca is a Staff Anaesthetist and Supervisor of Training at Eastern Health, with a strong commitment to medical education and supporting the next generation of anaesthetists.
Warm, kind and endlessly generous with her time, Rebecca has a natural instinct for looking after the people around her. She brings a reassuring, nurturing presence to both training and the ADVANCE Round Table — the sort of colleague who quietly notices when someone needs encouragement and is always there to offer it.
She embodies one of the principles at the heart of the program: that investing in each other’s learning ultimately translates into better care for our patients.
Dr Derrick Wong
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Champion Speed-Talker⌄
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Champion Speed-Talker⌄
Derrick is a Staff Anaesthetist and Supervisor of Training at Eastern Health and, in a former life, a lawyer before choosing the altogether quieter profession of anaesthesia.
Quick-thinking, sharp and endlessly engaging, Derrick brings clinical experience, an analytical mind and a formidable capacity for debate to the Round Table. A dedicated Supervisor of Training and wonderful colleague, he is generous with his time and deeply invested in supporting the trainees around him.
Derrick is exactly the person you want around the table when a question doesn’t have an obvious answer. There will be a perspective you hadn’t considered and he will almost certainly have thought of it.
Just don’t try to out-talk him. We’ve tried.
Dr Sarah Lee
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Nerd with a playlist⌄
Staff Anaesthetist | Supervisor of Training | Nerd with a playlist⌄
And No, not the cake!
Despite having spent most of her adult life in Melbourne, Sarah has held onto a proudly thick Singaporean accent. One that makes her explanations of pharmacokinetics somewhat more entertaining than the topic strictly requires.
A nerd at heart, she has stayed true to that calling through a genuine passion for bringing people together to learn, debate and share from one another’s experience, a passion that led her to found ADVANCE.
But never judge a book by it cover. This is also the colleague who rolls into the car park with Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise and 2Pac blasting one day, and Hans Zimmer’s The Dark Knight score or full-blown opera the next.
The range, frankly, says a lot about what’s going on in that mind…
(Soon to be Dr..)Nadine Lim
Medical Student | Part-time graphic designer | Budding runner⌄
Medical Student | Part-time graphic designer | Budding runner⌄
Nadine is a fourth-year medical student at Monash and the logistics director of her university’s Critical Care Special Interest Group (MECCSIG), where she is currently perfecting the art of balloon-psyllium-gelatin cannulation models for her peers to practice with.
Not content with just learning how to give a smooth anaesthetic, Nadine has revamped the ADVANCE website, redesigned the Eastern Health anaesthetic drug trolley labelling system and is now capably assisting Sarah with her methadone-vs-intrathecal-morphine RCT.
We cannot tell you how relieved we are to be joined by someone who actually knows how to use a computer.
More than the People around the Table
The Round Table is only one part of ADVANCE.
Every session is shaped by the trainees who review the literature, the experts who generously share their knowledge, the clinicians who contribute their perspectives and the hundreds of colleagues who complete our surveys, answer our live polls and join the discussion.
ADVANCE is volunteer-driven and built on a simple principle: none of us has all the answers but there is an enormous amount we can learn from each other.