UK Column Radio
The Presence – Dr Robin Kelly
Are patients being listened to? What does primary healthcare look like in the eyes of Dr Robin Kelly in New Zealand? When does a patient become a guest? What happens when you fuse traditional Eastern medicine with traditional Western medicine? Why is presence the most precious gift of all? Read the write-up at: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/the-presence-dr-robin-kelly
- Broadcast on:
- 19 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading, accounting, consulting, and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance, uncover opportunity, and move upward at MossAdams.com. Hello. Welcome to another UK column interview, and my name's Debbie Evans. And for those of you that don't know me, I'm a retired old-school state-registered nurse. I was a ward sister in my time. And, you know, I'm really delighted because in October, UK column are going to hit the road, and we're on location, and we're coming to Bristol. And we hope very much to meet many of our members and our audience to talk about what's going on, to find out who's doing what, where. But for some of our members, they can't get to us because they're international. And we have a very, very educated expert audience, and I like nothing more than to bring you some of our experts, some of our members who are doing amazing work in other countries. And I guess that's where tech, in a way, comes in really valuable, doesn't it? Because had we not got this facility, I wouldn't be able to introduce you to my guest today. And my guest today is Dr. Robin Kelly. Now, Dr. Robin Kelly is British-born, but emigrated to New Zealand. Yes, so we're flying all the way to the Southern Hemisphere to New Zealand again. He emigrated in 1977 with his wife Trish, and he's been practicing ever since. But he's done something a little different, because we literally do have a doctor in the house, because this doctor went off and built his own medical practice and attached it to his home, and then flew open the doors. And well, this is the GP practice where patients are called guests, and they have time to talk, to be listened to, and to be comforted and supported. And I'm really delighted to be able to welcome Dr. Robin Kelly, because you are a doctor with a difference, and just to give a little bit of background, and I'm going to ask you to do an introduction, of course, Robin, when I bring you on screen. But I just want to say for our audience, this is where East meets West, and you'll find out in a minute, because this is no ordinary doctor. Dr. Robin Kelly, welcome to UK Column. Thank you so much for agreeing to join us all the way from New Zealand, and thank you so much for your support as well. Oh, thank you, Debbie. I'm a great fan of a UK column. It sustained me specifically after the last four years, during the last four years. So, I'm really chuffed and honoured. Thank you. And you know what? That's such a good point, because many people say UK column keeps us saying it's a sanctuary to come to a sanctuary of sanity. And we need you to know that our audience are also our sanctuary of sanity. We keep each other going, and so we're incredibly grateful to you. But Robin, you trained as a doctor. You were born in the UK. You trained as a doctor. Your father was a GP. Tell us how about you? Well, tell us a bit about where you trained your background, and how you ended up all the way in the southern hemisphere in New Zealand. Yes, I trained at Middlesex Hospital in central London, which has now been knocked down and was a block of flats to be built. I think still may be a hole in the ground. And I qualified in 1974, so I've been qualified for 50 years. I did my residencies in and around London for the next three years. Then I wanted to go further afield. I'd done pediatrics, and I actually had become a radiotherapy registrar in London. But I came over to New Zealand, and actually my love was in general practice. And although my practice is attached to the right side of my home, I do realize that's what my father's practice was. We actually had a practice at home, so I knew. And it's pretty well in the same place. So I went all the way around the world to create a practice that probably hopefully matched my father's practice. My father was kind and humorous and Irish, and had a certain love for his patients, but told me that the actual system then, even at the end of the 70s, was difficult in that it was very pressured, a health service was pressured. I did two or three more years here in New Zealand. I came over to New Zealand. I was offered a registrar ship in pediatric oncology and pediatric cancer. But actually, when I came here, I discovered a mode of general practice that I would have dreamt about. In other words, we were allowed a whole 15 minutes to see people. And so I went into general practice here on the North Shore of Auckland in 1981. And one of the partners that I was working with had been to China and was practicing acupuncture. Now, very sadly, after three months, he died suddenly from a melanoma, metastatic melanoma. I was already impressed. I loved the guy. He was only 42. And I took over the patients and said, well, look, I want to learn this. I was really intrigued. So I started to incorporate acupuncture alongside my general practice, which I just joined. I was about 30 in those days. And I discovered, I suppose, so much more about how to communicate with the people coming to see me, to listen, to touch, and to achieve results, which actually I wasn't prepared for. Some people come in with sore nets. And I was doing very simple acupuncture on sore nets and sore backs. And they'd come back to me and say, look, Robin, the next night, I had the best night sleep. Or, for instance, my period, which was usually very heavy, was a lot lighter. So I became very interested. And I started to study acupuncture as the Chinese had studied acupuncture. And I went over for 10 years. I looked at this amazing paradigm, which has turned out to be eye of physics. It says he was the physics of the body, not just the chemistry of the body. And then after 10 years, I couldn't fit in this degree of connection in a quarter of an hour. So we decided in 1991 with my wife to go into practice to have a special style of practice where we were combining what I thought was the best of western medicine with what I understood was the best of eastern medicine, which actually really meant spending more time with people and getting to the roots of their problems and linking their emotional health, their philosophies of life, their challenges of life with their ill health, particularly if they had chronic conditions. So that is really my journey in a nutshell. That's not where it stops, is it? Because I mean, I want to come into what happens to your guests when they come to your practice, because they get cups of tea, they get hugs, they get welcome. But that's not where your talents stop, is it? Because it also goes into the creativity. You've made albums, you're a musician, you're a songwriter. I mean, tell us about how important you feel that creativity is to wellbeing as well. I think it's hugely important. And I was really in my 40s that I discovered through actually with links to what I was studying, but actually when I started to meditate, do qigong, to actually get a deeper feel on what I thought was the essence of living, that it seemed to spark off creativity in me or allowed me to discover my creative self. So there was a portion in the middle 90s that I started to write songs. I had always loved music, but I hadn't created my own music. And these songs just came to me, they flowed through me. And that made me understand some more, but when you're at peace and when your mind is rested, it's more likely that you're going to be receptive to creativity. I don't feel that creativity is just based on our past, I believe, that something that flows through us. And it also flows through us away from time pressure. So also around that time, I explored how creativity was so important for people's healing. And it doesn't have to be songwriting or playing the saxophone or painting. It can be a joy of your home. It can be a joy of your creating a garden. It can be a joy of the creation of your children. And usually it's about joy, basically, and it's about pressure outside time. So as so much of our problems are time-related. And one of the issues I've seen since I've done this is that the doctors were still locked into that time pressure, particularly in general practice, of trying to do an assessment in 10 minutes. We're asked, although it's the quarter of an hour here now for the standard doctors, it's really only six to seven minutes. All you can do at that time is actually react, the Hegelian dialectic of reaction and then solution. You maybe can't reflect and you can't be with somebody in that magical time where you're sitting down listening with an open heart. And ideas come through you, not just come through you, but actually come through two people that are meeting in harmony. And I have to say that the most important message I can pass on, I think, is I'm not expecting everybody to study Chinese medicine or acupuncture, but actually just being present with people allows a flow of information that is probably the most valuable thing as a doctor we can receive. So that's what happens. And I'm interested when people come on who they are, their philosophy. My rooms are full of artwork. And if somebody just mentions, "Oh, I've got some art," you may not be interested. I said, "No, I'd want to see that next time." And we have an opening into a deeper aspect of who they are. And anyway, that's really what's sustained me and makes me passionate about the job. And that's something that I'm seeing in general a lack of passion in medicine for what's happened over the last probably 30 years or so. Robin, I feel exactly the same because many of our regular audience will know. And as I said earlier, I'm a trained nurse. And I trained in the same time as you. You were at the Middlesex in the mid-70s. And I was at the Royal Free in the mid-70s. And medicine and the NHS to me have changed beyond all recognition. And we could talk about our days in the NHS. And perhaps we should. Perhaps we should at some point talk about what we were trained in and how we were trained because it's a million miles away from now. But you're talking about consultation times there of 15 minutes and you're UK trained so you know what the system's like here. At the moment in the UK, you're lucky to get an appointment with a GP. You're more likely to get an appointment with a nurse practitioner or perhaps something that has been paraphrased a nocta, which is a physician, which hasn't gone through a full medical training, has had a shortened training, so is not a qualified GP. And we live in this ever busy world where it's frantic and everybody's used to ordering something and getting it the next day. Everybody's on their devices. And I know that you've got a particular interest in electromagnetic frequencies in the busy lives that people have and the importance for them to stop and take time out from this superhighway of smart devices that we seem to be on. What are your views when it comes to... I mean, people must come to you and they're stressed, they're upset, maybe they're communicating with people all day long on a computer on a screen. What's your advice for them and what are your concerns moving on when it comes to all of what's going on at the moment with EMF? Yeah, I think firstly, I have to act in a way that I'm not stressed and I haven't got a device in my hand and I haven't got a computer in front of me. It was interesting 40 years ago, we was told and probably quite rightly that instead of having the patient in front of us behind a desk, and this was mean that we were sort of dominating them, we'd have them outside us. I still do that because now the doctor has the computer in front of us who is dominating effects, and basically there's a third party which is the patient. So that's the first thing. I think how we act, our presence must be unhurried, and hence we have to lengthen our consultation time. So my consultation times are a minimum of half an hour and a new patient has one to two hours and often they have to leave, get the hair done and say, "Look, I'm sorry, I've got to leave, but other things to do." And I'm so intrigued by them and I say, "Okay, I'll catch up with you at some other time." Yeah, so this is exactly right that the problems that we're seeing are time pressure problems. The problems we're seeing are, there's this term now called dysautonomia, which means that the autonomic motor system is out of filter, that it's too much in fight or flight. It's too rushed. It's actually designed for a 100-meter dash rather than a marathon, which is what life is. One of the things I realised when I did acupuncture, that I was putting little ins in and I said, "Actually, they were like antennae that were going to the outside world." And the outside world loves low frequencies, human resonances. We're actually designed for low frequency, low frequency. And by actually doing acupuncture, my aim and still is to create a sense of peace. And sometimes with them lying down for 20 minutes or half an hour, something clicks in them and says, "What is this interesting? You mean my body can do this?" I said, "Yes, I'm not adding anything extra to the body. I'm just allowing you to connect with natural frequencies of human resonances." And actually that led to my concerns about the frequencies that are around us now that were being created, which are the other end of the spectrum, the millimeter waves and other things. Because I am concerned that this isn't natural for our body. Our body is suited for these frequencies of 7 to 10 hertz or whatever. The same things that allow flowers to grow and mice to be happy. So then I developed an interest and started to research about five or six years ago the effects of electromagnetic frequencies, ones that have been produced artificially, the effect on the body. Because I had got a feeling over many years on how sensitive bodies are. Basically, huge changes can happen. The most gentle subtle interventions with acupuncture has to be very subtle. Even more so, even if when you touch somebody, they may feel their meridians light up if they're very sensitive. So I saw this huge range of sensitivities. I also realized those who are very sensitive absorb a lot of, they can absorb positive things, but they can absorb a lot of negative things. The bodies would come overloaded and fatigued. And actually that could be an issue with chronic fatigue syndrome. So it all added up to me being concerned about the electro smoke that's around, but also to allow people to achieve a sense of peace by themselves. So we may introduce them with something like acupuncture into breathing techniques. But hopefully, then they would say, "Well, that's great, Robin, but I don't want to keep coming back here. I'd rather you let me know how I can do this myself." Then we can go into creative acts, because once you're in a creative zone, then you'll lose sense of time. And that's our natural state. And when people, if they've had acupuncture or maybe gone through some meditative technique, they often feel very much a piece of the world, but one with the world, a sense of health that I would say is real health. My concern is that we have a health system that really hasn't defined what true health is. It seems to be a true health is not an absence of disease, but a controlled disease, rather than this next level of health, which we should be aiming for. Do you know what, Robin, I have to say that just listening to you, I get this sense of calm, just hearing your voice. I find your voice very calming and relaxing to listen to. And I've been making tons of notes because you're bringing up so many, so many different things. But of course, pharmaceutical companies, they need us to be sick, right? I mean, they can't operate if we're all healthy. So they operate with sick people. And you said a little while ago, and I picked up on it because I'm an old school nurse, and you said touch, and you said how important touch is, and how well where we should be of the effects that touching somebody can have. And I find that very interesting because in our day, we would touch patients all the time to take their pulse, to take their blood pressure, to hold their hands, to talk to them. So we're going full circle back to how we were trained in a much more holistic way. But equally, you see patients, excuse me, you see patients that do need traditional western medicine, as well as healing more holistic way like acupuncture or creativity. So you've seen vaccine injured patients coming into your surgery as well, patients with serious medical conditions. What kind of help can you give them and using the combination of your eastern medicine as well? How does that differentiate? And what are you doing differently? Because I know you are doing things slightly differently from other people. What are you doing that's helping the vaccine injured, for example? I think the first thing, and just to reiterate what I'm saying, I'm listening deeply. I'm listening to this story, and I'm believing this story, which I think is probably the most powerful thing I can do. I also have noticed that trauma is cumulative, and over many years I've identified that many of the people seeking my help have deep trauma that have even started in childhood, and I'm interested in transgenerational trauma as well. And what's happened over the last four or five years has added on to that trauma, not just from what's being injected, but also the way it's been injected. It's been injected abusively, if you like. So those people who have been abused earlier on in their lives, once they get another abuse, that can spark off lots of issues. So look at it elistically, I'm not just looking at the toxicity, and I assure you I am aware of the toxicity. I'm actually looking at the traumas that have preceded abus. And what has happened is that when somebody is traumatized in their youth, they lose confidence in authority figures, particularly if their parents or teachers, if they've been abused, or even sort of ignored. And this has been exacerbated in the last four years. Now, I probably have tried to be the antidote to that, just by listening to them. And that's also providing solutions. And some of the solutions have come in, what many of the good doctors have found out, things like the role of Ibah Mectin and other nutraceuticals and other things. And I certainly will have approached that. But I'll also look at their trauma, and there are certain ways energetic in energetic medicine to approach people who have been deeply traumat. It has to be done in with listening and compassion. I work here with my wife, and we try as much as anything to show that we have a loving relationship. We have a little dog who comes in and greets people. And so I think we have to see the depths of trauma that people have been, how they've been injured. And if we're really going to the depths, that's what I try to do. Also, those who have been, I have a lot of people who are musicians and artists. And an artist in a musician is also very sensitive. Basically, ideas flow through them. They're not thick skin. They love some support, some applause. And they have been particularly vulnerable to the events of the last four years. And I've been using certain approaches that have been used on those US military with post-traumatic stress. And they include certain types of very gentle acupuncture, including ear acupuncture, which is a step that I took and made me write a couple of books, because I was so impressed by this, that are used on those who have been deeply traumatized in the military. But what I've noticed, there's a complex post-traumatic stress in many of us. Most of us have a degree of complex post-traumatic stress. And most doctors have a lot of complex post-traumatic stress, which they need to address, at which I feel is being hidden. And that really derives from how they've been treated and overruled on a deep soul level. I don't know if that didn't make sense, but that's how I see how complex the last three or four years have been. As you're saying that, I've got this light bulb going on in my head, Robin, because I hadn't actually considered the effects, or we haven't actually talked to anybody about the effects of all that we've gone through on doctors. And we're very quick to critique, and yes, we've got some amazing doctors who are standing up and are speaking out. But equally, we've got an awful lot of doctors that are still in the system, and they're still doing, I guess, what they're told to do. And I hadn't actually considered what effects that was having on them. Have you spoken to any colleagues who are very uncomfortable with the way of travel? I mean, we all saw Jacinda at her during lock-up. I mean, all attention was on New Zealand during the pandemic or pandemic. So we were watching New Zealand very carefully. Were you seeing trauma increased in your colleagues, not just your patients, but in people that you were working with? Because you have stayed very much. You really walk to fine line, haven't you? Because you've kept on the side of the narrative in a certain way, which has enabled you to carry on practicing, but to carry on practicing in your more holistic way. But what effects are you seeing in the trade, if you like, in other doctors? I think what I was talking about, doctors, I feel that trauma has come often from the training in the past, what they've been through, a sort of boot camp. And then over the last 30 years, they've been controlled by so-called guidelines and computer algorithms. And I see it actually as they become dispirited, and they've turned into just sort of generally doing a job rather than following a deep vocation. So I think they harmed that they have experienced. They may not have seen at the time. They're certainly seeing now. So you see it in their actions. You see that doctors of my age are pulling out and retiring, and sadly selling their practices to commercial enterprises, who are again demanding more and more quick consultations and arms unceivably to more prescribing. So I'm seeing that. I'm seeing also the colleagues who really stood up against what's happening from a deep philosophical point of view over the last four years, from the Hippocratic oath, they felt very deeply once they took that oath. That was the most important thing in their lives, as well as their family lives, and also the Nuremberg code. And so I saw those were deeply affected. And of course they have left and joined our NZDSOS. They're a big group who are actually very active, and a lot of them have lost their jobs. And they actually are quite grateful for me to being sort of on site to see a lot of their people. I stopped doing podcasts, because I we were told that we shouldn't speak publicly. And I'm saying, "Okay, if I'm going to carry on with my very special practice, I can see people privately and we can talk a link within these four worlds, because everything is confidential. But I have huge respect for those who put their practices on the line. But of course, I've had to see people in this state. And I've received a lot of patients who have lost total confidence in the medical profession. And some of them have been where my patients in the 80s before I sort of went into this more niche practice. So I've seen them who were children then who are sort of advanced middle age now. And some of them haven't been on the same journey as me. They've been vaccinated and others, but they've lost confidence and they were really wanting to talk. So yeah, as far as doctors, I think what we're seeing is a collapse of the medical system that we once knew, and which is very sad. And I think many doctors aren't owning up to how empty they feel and are deciding just to do session work. They're certainly not taking on practices, they're coming in principles in practice. And I'm not saying 30, 40 years ago, it was really hard work, you know, it was hard work on our families. And it was a good move that people had more time. But I think we're seeing the end of the sort of practice that sustains me, unless I try and do something like this to try and encourage people to do what I do, not exactly how I do it, but to follow their passions. I'm sure it doesn't pay that well, but it's sustainable. And that's probably more important. I was going to ask you about that, actually, Robin, because for us, as you know, you're born in the UK, so you know the system here, but we just register with a GP. We're not paying any money, although at the moment with our two tier system that we seem to be having in the UK, we seem to be heading for a two tier society, two tier health system. But what is the system in New Zealand? Because you don't have the NHS in New Zealand, although the NHS has gone international, but technically you don't have the NHS in New Zealand. So for somebody moving to New Zealand, for example, what could they expect? Because you're an independent GP, as we would call in the UK, a private GP. But where are the other GPs? How does that figure into New Zealand's health system? Well, when I was in practice in the 80s, it was all owned by the doctors, and we had a certain amount of freedom. But at the same instance, we were very, I suppose we had a great connection with patients. We had to, you know, they could contact us and we never left people more than a day or two. What happened 25 years ago is they brought in this capitation system as the NHS. But it was actually not the same as that patients still had to pay. Now we have a capitation system where you sign up with a doctor, don't sign up with me, I never joined the system. And you still, when you're seeing them, have to pay them $50. And if there are some people with subsidies that may have to pay $20. So you've got this odd system, which is both private and then dictated to buy capitation. So the advantage for the doctors was that this was great. They thought at the beginning of the year, they would be given a certain amount of money for each registered patient. So they could collect to $300,000 early in the year, which allowed them to pace their themselves and take holidays and do other things. And they thought it was great. But of course, the downside is that they became community doctors dictated to buy protocols. They had to achieve vaccination rates. They had to cut the smoking in their practices. They had to actually follow national guidelines. So their focus became less on the person at the time into sustaining a practice according to government guidelines. Included in this was no superannuation or pension. And initially, just like with the NHS, the payments were quite good. But of course, they've been eroded by inflation. So they become an unhappy lot because of that. So actually, I think we got the worst of both worlds. We went into that sort of national health service without the benefits. And I kept away from that because they didn't allow me to have a practice where I could spend half an hour with each person. They just wouldn't fund that practice. And the only way I've been able to do it is to work for my home with my wife and keep our overheads down and sort of enjoy what I'm doing. It's again, and it ticks over. What we've seen in the last five years is all mum and dad businesses over here. And I think probably in the UK have been under huge stress. They've pretty well disappeared into franchise operations. And that's what's happened to general practice. Now, the doctors of my age have sold their practices and left, sold them to corporate franchises, who also are workers. So you've got the corporate franchise who insists on bums on seats and following the protocols and the government imperatives. And that's how they trap them in the processes of the last four years. And they made some money. I mean, if I was doing a local and I was doing PCR tests, I didn't stay very long doing those. But you'd be getting quite a bit of money for doing a PCR test, something like $100. And if you went into a rest home, you'd get $250 for every person you were doing a PCR test on. So there was a buying out of the profession. And at that stage, of course, they had the flows, they were doing phone consultations, and they were doing all this. So financially, it sustained their practices. But you know, it's a bit of a Faustian pact. It really is. And, you know, all of us, I think, I don't think anybody has not been, we've all been affected over the last four years. And we've all been anxious, whether it be anxiety over going to a doctor, anxiety over in the UK accessing the NHS, and then for other people, the fear that they've been under because they've believed in the whole COVID narrative, and they've been frightened. And some still are, sadly, and the whole, we haven't finished. We were now hearing news of COVID variants, and there's more coming down the line. So there are still people out there that are really, really frightened. Take us through, Robin, your appointment. So somebody phones you up and books an appointment, and they come along, and they see you. What can they expect? Because it's not what you, well, I think it's what we'd all like to expect in a GP surgery, quite honestly. But sadly, it's lacking. Your surgery is different. So you've got a meet and greet with your dog. Is this Alfie? Yeah, Alfie is not always there. It depends, but he usually gets fairly excited. And the, you know, children just love Alfie. And in fact, I would say Alfie is on a bum, basically, he does as much healing as anyone else. Yeah. But we're friendly. We make them welcome. If I try not to keep people waiting, but if there's a 10-minute wait, they're offered a cup of tea if they want, you know, and they come in. And often, it's like this. It's conducting an interview just like you're doing now, Debbie. I want to get to know them. And open up, I want to know who they are and their passions. Obviously, early on, if there's somebody coming from the shed, I also ask, what is it that you want from this? What is it do you want from this consultation, if I haven't seen it before, but generally for your health. And so say that in so many cases, the person comes in and has a different agenda from the doctor. And there's a clash. So I want to, so I jokingly say, give me some orders. What would you like us to cover? So when I make a note of that, I don't have a computer in my room. I just old fashioned notes writing down. I said, well, we'll make sure by the end of this that we've addressed that. And I might have some significant ideas of how to approach it that you have will address that. And I just want to get to know them. I have, if they're waiting in a room, I've got a library out here and the library, and often they pick up a book. And that's often an opening because they picked up a book, some may be something they're passionate about. The whole range of stuff, not just medical, but there's, you know, just books on creativity and, you know, we've got magazines and other things. So I think that's it. I just want to first of know what they are. What we've got in medicine now in our software programs is a list of what they call classification of your problems and medications. So everything is done in a linear way. And I wanted to start of what their philosophy is, and also what their passions are, that's not to, and if somebody comes in with an acute abdomen, obviously, I'm going to, I have, I'm a diagnostician, you know, I can't miss an appendix or somebody in April Fibrillation. I'm primarily a doctor. And so I, but I'm talking about those coming in with a possibly a chronic longstanding problem that isn't improving, that has been not been helped by the medical profession. And I really want to know how we can help in a slightly different way. By doing this, by having an hour with them, I do then cover all their medical problems and actually end up by xaring them fully so I can often find things that haven't been felt before, mainly because they're open. And the other thing is because they don't have a computer in my room, they trust me that the information they're giving to me is confidential. And that's another thing that's really concerning me. It's, you know, about the whole system. And people tell me that they're not sure what they're talking to the doctor is going to remain confidential. And often it isn't going to. And also, as far as medication is concerned, I still prescribe medication, but we're doing this, I prescribe a lot less. And we often find that once we start checking blood pressures when the person's relaxed or some sort of piece, or we've had in a good conversation, the need for blood pressure medication reduces down because we discover that that's often been taken at a time of pressure and tension. So undoubtedly, this leads to more focused prescribing, but less prescribing too. And then, you know, there are, as I say, what I found when I started to do acupuncture, somehow in 20 minutes, I could create a change or we could together create a change and allow a sense of peace to occur, which may be a stepping stone to deeper healing, which is really what I've tried to do. So it's been listening and to know what their agenda is. And to really, I say, when they come to see me, suss me out, am I good enough for you? Am I somebody who can actually be ever helped for you? Give them some power. I think, too, as well, I want to take you back to when you said belief, because you can listen, any doctor can listen, I guess, but it's believing. And I know that, you know, since I've spoken to so many vaccine injured people, their frustration, their anger and their journeys have been exacerbated so much because people haven't believed them, medical professionals haven't believed them. They've said that their symptoms are in their head. And we know sometimes, you know, when we get sick, when we get depressed, when we get anxious, then things do go on in our heads. But for these people that have got very serious physiological symptoms and are suffering huge amounts of pain and illness, it's, it really is, it is beyond words what we found they've been never believed. So I think the fact that someone can come to you, be listened to and believed, that's the really important thing. And I, and I confidentiality, I can, I'm seeing these little light bulbs going off in my head all the time because confidentiality is a huge thing. We all thought that when we go and see our doctor, confidential, however, in the climate that we're living in at the moment, where if we say the wrong thing, have we upset somebody, have we offended somebody, will we get reported, will there be a knock on the door in the UK at the moment, you know, we're all kind of thinking, well, if we repost something on social media, people are, are having their doors knocked on. So I think that's a really good point. And I'm not sure that our viewers and listeners that are watching now in the UK will all feel comfortable actually now talking to their doctors, because they're not quite sure if they're saying something that they should, or actually if they're putting themselves at risk by admitting that they're not very well, because all of a sudden we seem to have got this clinical frailty score in the UK. And there's these secret codings that are going on. So we've gone in for consultation, and a doctor is ticked a box or put a few codes down. And all of a sudden, you know, we're past our cell by date, we don't know how our information and how our, I guess, how our attitudes and behavior is coming across now to GPs and to doctors. So there's this huge sense of mistrust and distrust now that's going on within the health system. And many people are seeking private medical care, and they're also seeking alternative medical care. But of course that comes at a price. And we know the public know that as doctors, you have to, you have to survive, you have to make a living. But some people aren't going to be able to access that kind of help. And I think we need to become now far more holistic in the UK. We're seeing community care hubs popping up all over the place, which are going to replace those those GPs that you said were selling up their practices, retiring. Those are what are replacing those little tiny practices where you could go in and you'd known your doctor for years and years now. You don't know who you're going to see. And I know that AI is particularly concerning because are we going to be able to, are we going to be speaking to bots? Is AI going to be diagnosing us? I mean, what serious effects, because I can see many serious effects, especially psychological effects of if you're talking to AI, or if AI is diagnosing you, what are your thoughts moving forward on artificial intelligence, Robin? I think it's sort of been with us for some time in that there was this shift to so-called evidence-based medicine. And evidence-based medicine wasn't the experience of a doctor like me who's been practicing for 50 years, or even an understanding of intuition, which I talk a lot about too, but that's something we develop, intuition and experience. Evidence-based medicine has been based on papers, the studies in journals, which we know from so many of the editors have most of come out and saying that you can't trust it. Maria Engels from the New England Journal of Medicine several years ago said, look, 90% of the papers are rubbish. Now, AI is just going to collect all that information that's come from academic departments who have been funded by big corporations and collate those and say this is the way you're going to practice medicine. And the actual discriminating doctor has been cut out of this. I'm sure that the plan is to cut out thinking doctors. You've seen it. It's happening. Because we, the thinking doctor, will could challenge what they're seeing. And we're seeing less and less of that. We're seeing doctors who are just following protocols and they're AI-driven protocols. And then the doctor becomes somebody you can actually don't need anymore. Because the protocol of the patient can go straight to the protocol and go straight to the pharmacist. The experience of someone else and the presence of someone else, which I think is the most important, is no longer being valued. And that worries me. I think that's happening. And the problem is that our generation know this, but the last two generations may be not have had experience of the sort of medicine that we're trying to practice and will accept it as normal. That there'll be a protocol that's been promoted here. As you know, we've had direct consumer advertising with the first country in the world that's had that for over 30 years. So people go to their doctors, having seen their advert, the pharma advert on TV. And in six minutes, ask the doctor to prescribe this medication. And in six minutes, that doctor, especially if they're charging $50, aren't they? They say no. So it's been well known that these influences of which AI is just expanding have been there on general practice. And it's really, it has it's taken, it's taking the thinking doctor out of the equation because they probably are the block to overprescribing. And that's certainly what's happened here. So the great dangers, I think, what's the good things about AI? I've been talking to an AI specialist and apparently applying AI to retinal diagnosis and then treatment, laser and everything is game changing. And I will accept that. I will know that the reading of scans and CTs and MRIs by AI is probably more efficient than even the most experienced radiologist. And that's a worry. So on that level, yeah, it's fine. But to take away the presence of other human beings in people's healing, I'm, I just, I don't like, I don't like that at all. Robin, you say the word presence and I get, I get what you mean by presence. And I think everybody watching will as well. But how do you describe presence? Because it's so fundamentally important. It's the center of everything. But how do you describe it? So difficult, isn't it? I think, I mean, many people that come to us and I'll just ask them something and there'll be tears in their eyes when they describe it. Well, I haven't thought that. So just that won't happen on Zoom. That will happen if you're present with somebody and intuitively you pick up a sadness or you may well say, oh, look, you look happy today or you look sad today. So just the actual presence of somebody close to you, in confidence, opens the door to a deeper sense, a deeper healing healing. Deep healing doesn't go in a straight line. There's ups and downs. So there's that other person has to be with you on the ups and downs and reassure you on the downs and also reassure you on the ups, to say that, okay, it may not be so good tomorrow. So I don't see how any computer algorithm that come close to doing that. It's also a huge privilege for the doctor or the therapist or the nurse. I think you'd say, Debbie, that was what you were doing as a nurse. You were there with their ups and downs and you were laughing and crying with them and also sometimes feeling really lost with them. That's also important. Just one story. I mean, it's just a brief story. About 20 years ago, a young, he's about 11-year-old boy who had come over from Cambodia, war-torn Cambodia with his parents. His father had arrived in New Zealand and within four weeks had died of an asthma attack and he watched the father die. He came to see me and he developed a twitch. He developed a tick in his face, which of course at that age he was being teased awfully at school for. The grandparents brought him in and said, look, I've got to do something about it. I've heard acupuncture that helped. I sat with him and intuitively fell. I didn't want to stick things into him. I can use lasers or various other things. I just wanted to really get to know him. So I said, well, what's your passion? He said, I'm a tap dancer. I'm doing tap dancing at my school. I said, tell you what, I will go into this room. They may think we're doing acupuncture, but could you teach me to tap dance? I tap dance in the dead dance sort of way. I was dead dancing with him. We did this over four or five times and I talked to him and his twitch went. It was very clear that he was deeply grieving for his father. Rather than the grandfather figure I am now, I was a grandfather figure in those days. To me, if that explains the presence of someone, I was terrible at tap dancing, which he thought was really funny. I still can remember some of the moves. It's not rocket science. But as you will know, Debbie, these are the things that you remember and they give you joy and give you sustenance to carry on or give me anyway. You're so right. I feel a lump in my throat, actually, because when you said privilege, this is why for me, especially, it's so lovely to talk to others who have trained at the same time as myself. I get loads of emails from doctors that trained at the same time as we did, from nurses that trained at the same time as we did. They're all saying the same. It was a privilege. It is a privilege. When you go into hospital, it's a scary experience. It's anxiety-inducing. Patients aren't used to hospitals. The smell, the noises, the different people, the difference in routine, it's scary. We always used to laugh with our patients. We used to tell jokes. We used to cry with them, too. I still remember many of my patients by name, some of them we lost. Some I cried openly with the relatives and other times privately by myself. There was the human presence. It was there. You're absolutely right. I guess because I haven't been in clinical setting for so long, perhaps I hadn't noticed that it had gone, because TLC, that was about some braces of our training, tend to love and care. Every single person that came into a hospital, we were told that we should imagine that that was one of our family. That was our mom, our dad, our brother, our sister. The relatives were our regulators. We welcomed the relatives. They used to pile in at two o'clock in the afternoon with flowers and magazines and smiles and tales of home and reassurance of the dogs fine, the cats being fed, your pensions being picked up, all of those little things sitting. I used to get told off for sitting on a bed because you could never sit on a bed. You'd end up with a matron coming over and say infection control off that bed because sitting on a bed, holding hand, sharing a cup of tea to me was the best medicine ever. It was good for me because I got to hear how the patient was feeling. It was good for the patient because they had communication, that one-to-one communication, because we're whizzing around all the time, so to be able to stop and take time. That's what you give your patients time. For many that are watching who are going, "Well, I can't get to New Zealand. I don't live near Robin. What do I do?" There's a question for you, Robin, for people that are watching, listening, going, "Well, I can't access Robin, but I want to access that sense of calm, that sense of peace, but I don't know a GP near me in order to achieve that. What can they do to help themselves?" Hopefully what I'm talking about is not the survival of doctors because if doctors don't do this and they don't survive in the way that I've talked about, and that's their fault some ways, the great shame is that there's going to be people that miss out on this. I always say, "Well, the reason I'm sort of speaking out on this is for not for doctors so much as people to demand this to be." It's very, very difficult. I've thought really deeply about this, and I think it's so deep this. It probably goes into our education from childhood and how we are being educated even before people go to medical school to follow their passions, which is something that I've done since I've been in medical school. Everything I've done is self-talked now, and that's how I remember it. It's a very good question. How are people going to access this sort of medicine and not pay through the nose for it? I hope there's enough doctors who, I've been able to do it, and people, I do charge it as private, but it's not. People hopefully can still afford what I do. I think every doctor, you can only come through this through a deep longing or yearning to be this sort of doctor. I don't think you could even teach it. I think it has to start at school, at medical school, or whatever, where people are attracted to this because of humanities and everything. It may take a bit of time before this has developed. I just want people to somehow know that this is possible out there, and doctors don't have to do acupuncture. They just have to follow their own heart and deeper conviction on healing. I wish I could answer that properly, but I know it's a bit desperate for people. I know people are desperate for this. They can write to me, and if they like, if they've got suggestions, because I'd love to know, I'd love to know. Oh, that brings me on, actually, to my final question before I throw to you for your last word, which is, where do we find you? There will be an article underneath this interview when it goes out, and there's going to be links to, because Robin, you've done a tech talk. I've watched it, so I've popped a link into that. There'll be links to your books, because you've written a few of those as well, and there'll also be a link to your website. But just briefly, before I hold a throw to you for the last word, tell us where we can find you, and where people in New Zealand, and welcome if you're in New Zealand, and if you're saying, yes, I want to go and book an appointment with Robin. How do we do that, Robin? I think probably through the website is the best. It's a link to my email, and that's probably the best thing, and I've got my phone number there, which is probably the easiest, and that gets through to my wife, who is really good at helping sort out appointments. So, and I think that that's good. As far as my books, you can get them on Amazon. I have a supply of my rooms, but unfortunately, I have to go to Amazon, because I can't import all of them anymore. I think anybody in New Zealand can just Google my name, and they'll get the address, and picture of our home, and everything, so I don't think that's particularly difficult for them. I'd love to hear from people and if I can't help them, I can certainly guide them to someone else who can. It's just wonderful that we have doctors like you, and I hope that if there are any GPs out there that are watching that think, actually, this is a good model. This is a very good model, and it's working. I would hope very much that you would contact Robin and have a chat, because in the UK, we really need a system like this, and if you know of a doctor in the UK that is operating in a similar way, East meets West, and holistic therapies as well, then please let us know. Similarly, if you like what the UK column does, and you would like to support us, we would be incredibly grateful. Please share our material and pass it around, because we often tell you things at UK column that you won't find anywhere else, because we speak to our members, and we speak to our audience, because our audience are so learned and expert. And in particular today, Robin, as well as thanking you for staying up, because it's evening time, New Zealand, morning time in the UK. I'd also like to thank Stephanie Sinclair, our producer, who has facilitated this interview earlier, the normal for us. So thank you to everybody who's been watching, and I'm going to throw to you, Robin, for your last word, and thank you so, so much for being a member supporting us and coming to speak to us. Thank you. I suppose my final message is the importance of presence, of somebody else who can help and guide you. I find patients, people coming to me, guide me in so many ways anyway, and that it's important that you have somebody that isn't a doctor, isn't just looking at a computer screen following an algorithm, but actually is listening to you. They can certainly use all the technology, and a lot of it's wonderful, but they have to be listened to you. So if you leave that doctor's room without feeling you're being listened to, then try and find someone else. I know that's difficult, but I think it's got to come deeply from the public to demand this, and I just wish well for everybody, and that's what I'm trying to do now is just to spread the word, so somebody hopefully will pick this up, and please they don't have to do it like I've done. You don't have to do acupuncture, Chinese medicine. You just have to use your own deeper, there's a deep part of your soul involved, but also your creativity and your common sense, and good luck to everybody. What's next? 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