About Dr Barb
Dr Barb believes that Health is not just the “Absence of Disease”, and that too often our environment (internal and external) robs us from achieving true Health. She uses her medical knowledge to work out why her patients are feeling unhealthy and her talent as a communicator to empower them to make the changes necessary to achieve Health.
About Dr Barb:
Hello!
Welcome to my website. I’m glad you have found me.
I’m Dr Barbara Panitz, a wife and mother of two and a well established GP in a beautiful Queensland (Australia) Coastal town.
I have lived and worked in Gladstone since 1998. During that time, while looking after hundreds of pregnant ladies and delivering their babies and watching them grow, I became intrigued by the developmental origins of health and disease, and came to an understanding that true preventative health lies in changing the environment in which we grow and develop, right from preconception through to old age.
Had it not been for my own health challenges which were not responding well to prescribed treatment, I would probably still be unaware of the critical role nutrition and environment play in maintaining good health. Fortunately for me, and I hope, my patients, those challenges were the catalyst for me to decide to learn more about these issues, and I attended my first Nutritional and Environmental Medicine conference in 2011.
After several years of attending Nutrition conferences, I decided in 2016 to enrol in the formal training pathway towards an ACNEM fellowship. This education commitment was in addition to the already full continuing medical education schedule required by the Australian Colleges of GP and O&G requirements. Now that I am a few years along the NEM pathway, I have found that my practice has evolved from “mostly regular GP issues” to “a mix of GP and NEM issues”. Where once I might have written a script to treat the health issue, I now find myself explaining why the issue happened in the first place, and what steps the patient can take to help to prevent it happening again.
I am grateful for my medical training and strong grounding in general practice, which is a solid foundation on which to build my growing knowledge of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. I am a GP first, and the NEM information builds upon what I would do for a patient as a GP.
The Gladstone Mater Hospital closed it’s maternity unit in September 2018, and I delivered my last private baby in October 2018 at the Gladstone District Hospital. I am sad that we lost this wonderful option for birthing mothers in Gladstone, and I hope that the Gladstone District Hospital will continue to treat expectant families with the same competence, care and compassion.
No longer having regular night- time call – outs means that I am now in a better position to continue my studies and NEM practice.
My Background
I grew up in Nerang on the Gold Coast (Queensland, Australia). My parents were third- generation wholesale bakers (don’t get me talking about bread!!) and were very active in the community, with commitments to many community service groups. I have continued their service philosophy in maintaining my participation in the Gladstone Municipal Band, where I play flugelhorn and am their uniform custodian.
In Medical School, I decided that I wanted to be a “country doctor who delivered babies”. Working toward that goal, I chose electives, courses and training programs which culminated in me coming to Gladstone in 1998 as a “Country GP who Delivers Babies”. My own babies arrived in 1999 and 2001. They are my joy and in no small part my teachers – the adage, “a mother is only as happy as her saddest child” rings true for me, too. My husband David is my helpmate and my soulmate and my rock. He has supported me wholeheartedly on this journey in to this exciting and still evolving field of medicine.
So that is me, a not – quite – so country GP, always learning, always striving to separate the science from the pseudo-science, the hype from the reality, the dogma from the uncertainty. The volume of literature and new research is so huge,it is literally impossible to know it all. However, I trust my training, and if I need to, I’m able to say “I don’t know, I’ll have to look it up and get back to you”.
Yours in good health,
Dr Barb.
Qualifications:
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, University of Queensland (MBBS 1992)
Advanced Diploma in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (DRANZCOG Adv 1999)
Fellowship in (Rural) General Practice, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (FRACGP, Grad Dip Rural General Practice, FARGP 1999)
Certification in Nutritional And Environmental Medicine (Level 1) Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, (2019)
Fellowship in Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (2022)
Current Memberships:
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (https://www.racgp.org.au/)
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (https://www.ranzcog.edu.au/)
Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (https://www.acnem.org/)
Biobalance Health (http://www.biobalance.org.au/)
Australian Medical Association (https://ama.com.au/)
Member, Australian Integrative Medicine Association (https://www.aima.net.au/)
Philosophy:
A General Practitioner has a privileged role in being privy to people’s most private thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams. People are not a diagnosis – they are a person living with a constellation of signs and symptoms to which I may apply a diagnostic label as a shorthand way to describe their situation, but the diagnosis is not the patient, and two people with the same diagnosis will not necessarily need the same treatment.
The term “environment” is an all encompassing word meaning not only the physical environment (pollutants etc) but the nutritional, psycho-social and microbial environment. Humans live in a symbiotic relationship with their environment, and ill- health is often a product of a damaged environment. This is reflected in the burgeoning diseases of affluence – obesity, autoimmune, allergic, cardiovascular diseases and malignancies. It is difficult to distance oneself from all of the potential harms, so to be pragmatic, I encourage my patients to start with achievable targets and work toward those.
From a Doctor’s point of view, much of the joy of medical practice comes when the doctor has helped a patient successfully negotiate a health challenge. More and more, the traditional disease model, which works well for Trauma Care and Infectious Disease, is failing patients with multi-system, multi symptom disorders. This is why I have decided to learn about Nutritional and Environmental Medicine strategies for my patients. Perhaps there is no cure for that particular dis-ease, but much of the time NEM is able to help people feel better.
Health, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” I strive to help my patients work toward this goal.
As their doctor, I can’t make them healthy, but I can give them the tools they need to achieve a healthier state, whether it is through conventional treatments or through Nutritional and Environmental means.
I have made an artwork of this quote by Norman Cousins for my consulting room, and I endeavour to conduct my practice accordingly:
‘I pray that the medical students will never allow their knowledge to get in the way of their relationship with their patients. I pray that all the technological marvels at their command will not prevent them practising medicine out of a little black bag if they have to. I pray that when they go into a patient’s room, they will recognise that the main distance is not from the door to the bed but from the patient’s eye to their own, and that the shortest distance between those two points is a horizontal straight line – the kind of straight line that means most when the physician bends low to the patient’s loneliness, fear, and the overwhelming sense of mortality that come flooding up out of the unknown and when the physician’s hand on the patient’s shoulder or arm is a shelter against darkness.’*
Perhaps the quote is a little outdated in it’s sentiments…. and I don’t have a black bag….. but I try always to use my knowledge for and with my patients.
*Norman Cousins, The Healing Heart p114-115, Avon Books, New York, NY, 1983