62 | Dr. Pecky de Silva on toxic work cultures, surgical complications & vascular surgery

Dr. Pecky de Silva is a vascular and endovascular surgeon based in New South Wales, Australia. She trained in the University of New South Wales before undertaking her junior surgical training in Sydney and completing further training overseas. She is the Chair of Younger Fellows at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS), and is on the RACS Women in Surgery Committee as well as the New South Wales RACS Regional Board.

In this episode, we discuss her pathway into medicine, failures she overcame in medical school, managing expectations of ethnic minority parents, the bullying and toxic work cultures she experienced in training, advice on how to navigate them, and lifestyle and superannuation advice. Pecky also discusses imposter syndrome and how she has learned to navigate surgical complications and poor surgical outcomes, as well as her work-life balance in vascular surgery.

You can find Dr. Pecky de Silva's professional website here: https://drdesilva.com.au/

As always, if you have any feedback or queries, or if you would like to get in touch with the speaker, feel free to get in touch at doctornos@pm.me.

Audio credit:
Bliss by Luke Bergs https://soundcloud.com/bergscloud
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/33DJFs9
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/e9aXhBQDT9Y

Chapters

• 0:00 Pecky de Silva
• 1:15 Finding medicine
• 6:53 Expectations of ethnic minority parents
• 15:37 Challenges and silver linings
• 18:02 Bullying & toxic work cultures
• 35:51 Racial and gender biases in medicine
• 44:05 Making mistakes as a surgeon & poor surgical outcomes
• 50:16 Imposter syndrome in surgery
• 55:05 Lifestyle and superannuation advice