Meet Dr Ivers

Meet Dr Bob Ivers, Orthopaedic Surgeon and LexiMed Consultant.

What are you passions outside of medicine?

Well, Toowoomba is a very big cycling city and my wife and I do lots of cycling. My wife and I would cycle five days a week, perhaps even more. On the weekends we like to do long rides, greater than 80kms. We also like to go to the beach. Living in Toowoomba, the big thing is that there is no water and I need to get rejuvenated at the beach. We have a place on the beach front and it is beautiful just listening to and walking along the beach. Plus we’re big coffee shop people!

What are your favourite places?

I like France and we spent a month there recently. We do French [language] twice a week. We are going to go back for a month soon with Dr John Morris. But I really like going to America; especially to Vale. That’s my favourite spot and we are off to there in February to ski. I’m not a very good skier. Mind you, last time I skied I had a broken arm following a fall from a bike a week before we left. I just had to go. So, when I was skiing downhill I could only turn one way because I only had one pole.

What do you think has been your greatest achievement?

I guess I would have to say my family. In fact, my son is engaged and guess who is to be the best man? I’ve never heard of the father being the best man before. So I think that is a big honour, therefore, I think that that would have to be the thing that is most important. So, I like to think I’m a good father.

What do you enjoy about doing medicolegal reports?

The best things about it is to get a bit of an idea about how other people deal with patients and it’s part of trying to improve my own practice and my own way of dealing with people. When you don’t do this sort of work, you are busy and you haven’t got time to listen and you make up your mind within a minute. Whereas, you have to listen to these people; they’re different and you have to spend more time. We are only seeing a bit of their life, the fact that they have a sore back; but really there are tonnes of other things going on and you can see that.

So, why did you choose Orthopaedics?

Orthopaedics is a personality thing and I’ve got the personality. I think that’s obvious to everyone after a while and the more orthopods you run across, the more you will see that that’s the case. I did Neurosurgery for a while but the boys just pressure you and finally you have no choice; you just do it. It’s a great honour to be tapped on the shoulder and so you just sort of mooch into that.

If you could have any other career, what would you choose?

I like IT. I have a Masters in IT and that wasn’t available when I was younger. So, if IT was available I probably would have done that.