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:in good hands friends after I had finished caring for them as you share so much together. I also think that you need to be non-judgmental. It is easy to do, but actually we see a range of people in a range of difficult circumstances and I can't ever put myself in their shoes completely. We work as a team at Auckland and will talk through difficult cases and sometimes ask a colleague to take over the care if we are finding it too hard. It is also good to talk and we each have our own approach. I have great friends and family I can offload on as well as colleagues. WHO HAS BEEN THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER TO DATE? The person who has had the biggest effect throughout my career is Professor Lesley McCowan. Lesley is a highly committed and excellent researcher with an impressive international portfolio of papers. She was a senior academic whom I worked with in the University of Auckland. In addition, she is a Maternal-fetal Medicine Sub-specialist like myself and has an amazing capacity to check detail when it comes to a woman's care. Nothing escapes her eye which means they always get excellent evidence based care. In many ways I wanted to be like her. IF YOU COULD INVENT ONE THING TO MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER… WHAT WOULD IT BE? An ability to translate my thoughts and words when talking to women in clinics and making plans and decisions instantly into the written word so I don't have to type or dictate or write notes! YOU ESTABLISHED THE NEW ZEALAND MATERNAL FETAL MEDICINE NETWORK (NZMFMN) IN 2010. WHAT NEED DID THIS SERVICE FILL? HOW SUCCESSFUL HAS IT BEEN? At the time the Network was established there were two driving forces; the number of Doctors with the level of expertise and 12 | www.h e rmagaz i n e . c o. n z qualifications available to provide care were very small and one of the only doctors in the South Island with expertise was leaving New Zealand. Another unit in the North Island was also potentially about to lose a specialist due to disappointment with support and the care that could be provided. The second driving force was that women in smaller units and in rural situations were not getting the right care at the right time as there weren't clear pathways to get the women to the correct care and in many cases, a lack of understanding by caregivers as to what Maternal-Fetal Medicine care was available. We were often the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than the fence at the top. The combined MFM doctors around the country proposed a network which was supported directly by the Ministry of Health to improve the situation. The network has been a real success (in my opinion). We now have three well staffed units and have eight subspecialists in New Zealand (there were five) with three more in training (only one previously). The Auckland MFM unit is now considered the best training unit in Australasia by many in our field. The future for our area and the women we care for looks bright as a result. In addition, the networking out to individual midwives and doctors and the training we run means that the pathways of referral are sorted and women who need an opinion get seen in a timely fashion. You introduced the Selective Fetoscopic Laser Photocoagulation for Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome to New Zealand. What exactly is this and why hadn't it been introduced into New Zealand earlier? Twins who share a placenta are identical twins and are particularly high risk. There are blood vessels connecting the twins within the placenta and there can be an uneven blood flow between them. This can result in one having too much blood and one not enough. If it is severe there is an almost 100% chance of losing both the babies. The most common time for this to happen is between 18 to 26 weeks gestation. This condition can be picked up on routine ultrasound scans. In the past,