Doctor. Lawyer. Academic. Author. Researcher. Dr. Marie Bismark is many things, but across it all, she is a passionate, articulate, and driven advocate of patient safety, mental health among health care workers, and complaints resolution. And as such an advocate, much of Dr. Bismark’s career has been in and around health care regulation. 

She leads the Law and Public Health unit at the Centre for Health Policy at Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health. She’s an active clinical practice as an advanced trainee in psychiatry with North Western Mental Health. She is an experienced company director and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Her current governance roles include serving as non-executive director of the Royal Women’s Hospital, Summerset retirement villages, and GMHBA health insurance.

If that wasn’t enough, Dr. Bismark has worked as a doctor in a number of New Zealand hospitals, served as a legal adviser to the Health and Disability Commissioner, worked as a solicitor with a preeminent New Zealand law firm, and completed a Harkness Fellowship in Healthcare Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. She’s also published many papers and articles on no-fault compensation, patient safety and healthcare complaints resolution.

Somehow, amidst it all, she found time to sit down and chat with Ascend Radio host Paul Leavoy for a wide-ranging conversation covering:

• How fewer than 5% of practitioners account for nearly 50% of the complaints to health care regulators.
• The effectiveness of mandatory courses in ethics for those who receive complaints.
• The most common features you have seen regarding sexual misconduct complaints
• Her professional and academic journey, and much more.

Learn more about Dr. Bismark and the incredible work she is doing:

• Follow her on Twitter.
• Read Experiences of Health Workers in the COVID-19 Pandemic: In Their Own Words, the book on how health workers coped with the global pandemic, which she co-authored.
• Learn about a study she published that revealed one in 10 Australian health care workers reported thoughts of suicide or self-harm during the COVID-19 pandemic.