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Travels From:
Brisbane
Fee Range: B
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Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery
Director: Royal Flying Doctor Service
Dr Toby Ford is a leading expert in the area of corporate health risk management.
He is a nationally acknowledged speaker and presenter on health, lifestyle, stress and motivation. He presents at many key notes, work shops, starter sessions for conferences, company retreats and staff development programs on health risk programming in workplaces. With various television, radio and conference presentations he promotes the virtues of maintaining quality of working life, lifestyle and wellbeing.
After graduating from the University of Queensland Medical School and spending his residency at the Mater Hospital, Dr Ford spent time as a Flying Doctor and in suburban general practice. Interest in prevention of illness, early screening and detection were pursued overseas in the USA and mthe United Kingdom, giving a good grounding in many facets of worksite health.
Dr Toby Ford is the founder of Ford Health Group a Corporate Health Provider for individuals, employees and organisations throughout Queensland and Australia. His clients include Australian Institute of Bankers, Rio Tinto, Woolworth’s Australia, CPAs., Ernst and Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Queensland Government Executive Leadership Program, CSR, Incitec (formerly ICI) Australian Large Herd Association, Raine Horne Real Estate, Tempo, ANZ Bank NAB, Westpac, BHP Billiton, Coles Myer, and ACCA.
Dr Toby Ford is married with two teenage children. A keen potter, rower and supporter of the rural sector, his stories from country general practice and travel abroad lend a good balance to his presentations.
Toby’s Talks
Topic Area: Healthy Management Techniques
It’s Difficult to Soar like an Eagle When You Work like a Turkey.
The modern leader is confronted with an information data load like never before. The expectation to travel, communicate by Blackberry 24/7 and to manage decentralised teams is fast becoming the norm. A hierarchical leadership style is not adaptive to this environment. The "all knowing" leader of old times when confronted with the new information/IT overload becomes aware of incomplete knowledge and assumes this is synonymous with incompetence. This leads to self doubt and adrenaline driven anxious behaviour that can underpin a corrosive style leadership burning teams, marriages and relationships in the wake. Toby looks at ways that managers and executives can move to a collaborative style, picking up skills through personal health management and learning to become resilient. Using the experiences gained from executive health programs he has been running since 1989, he provides a light hearted look at why some executives are acting like turkeys and being their own worst enemies. He looks at others that have incrementally improved their outputs with simple skills, that when used daily, can improve consistent decision making whilst working under pressure.
Swimming with the Sharks and Eating Them
This is an amusing 1-1.5 hour talk suitable for key note, late afternoon and evening slots. A collection of experiences from executives seen over the years is presented, and how they have worked their skills up to cope well with business and work life balance.
The audience will leave with 6 skills that have stood the tide of time and can be easily incorporated into the audience’s daily routine immediately. It is funny and light-hearted but gives the real messages.
Topic Area: Men’s Health
The Working Man - Are we adapting well to the urban jungle?
If you are a working man or you work with men this is a good presentation to see the lighter side of why men die early or at least burn out faster than women. In Toby’s time as a corporate doctor he has seen the working man changing from time rich with hobbies, holidays and community activities like Rotary to a person driven by the email, decentralised company structures and deadlines of the boom times.
Men traditionally stumble through periods of great discomfort like "the 32 to 35 Marriage, Mortgage, Money squeeze", "the midlife crisis at 40 to 45" , " the 55 year old expiry before used by date panic" and don’t quite know what to do. In their competitive isolation they feel that they are the only man with problems, and yet it is quite evident from Toby’s practice over the last 20 years that there is actually a pattern and that there are ways to approach these periods and be effective and merge with a plan for better effectiveness and efficiency for the next phase of life.
If you are one, or you work with one, then this presentation has some funny bits and some not so funny bits to ponder and incorporate into your life.
Get to the Heart of the Matter Doc!
This is a series of stories from experiences in the bush through to New York about patients and what caused their heart disease. The presentation runs for 40 minutes to one hour.
There are ten or more causes for heart disease that Dr Ford will touch on, everything from mung beans to coronary artery calcium scoring is covered. Aimed at those who think they have a heart but aren’t sure where it is, Dr Ford talks to the audience about your heart in simple easy terms.
This is a good talk for men and very useful for women who may be worried about their male partners.
Topic Area: Rural Health
Who Let my Cows Out?
Modern farming is complex. The tendency of young adults growing up on the land to leave when the promise of fun in the city presents itself, usually in the form of bikini clad girls in night clubs, means that they leave behind communities which are, on average, older bringing greater health problems, both physical and psychological
Why is it that some people bounce back after being hit by life’s problems, while others become stuck, opting for ‘victim’ status? Whether faced with small scale set-backs, like your footy team getting flogged or threatening situations like droughts or flooding, some find it tough to get on with life. Toby takes you on a humorous journey to see that if we can find and identify the elements of natural resilience, then ways of coping can be developed.
Perhaps choice is the key. Without choice we can’t have autonomy and without some autonomy and personal control we can’t have a sense of well-being. Yet, despite being much better off than our grandparents, and having an infinitely wider range of choice in every aspect of life, are we actually happier?
Topic Area: Health for Staff
Don’t stress the lift with fat Assets
Can you afford not to promote a healthy environment where the biggest asset goes home in the lift each night?
In a market where employers are scrambling to attract and retain good quality, productive staff, there has to be some win/win ground for both parties. Whilst simple in theory, this can not be achieved by exploiting workers, rather by working with them to enhance productivity and performance.
A new approach to workplace health models sees the differentiation of what is legislated for employers to provide and what is regarded as value adding or discretionary funded enhancement to employment. Workplaces that implement health promotion however need to measure benefits so they can be financially justified.
In this presentation, Dr Toby Ford, a leading authority on health risk management in the workplace, will look at ways the Corporate Health Program can deliver results for all employees and savings to business. The key to the equation is the sentiment of the employer and the commitment by the employee. This along with ROI modelling will be presented for discussion.
Jumping off the Hayshed Roof
The pressure to perform in our lives at peak levels is increasing in today’s busy world. Physical, medical and mental wellbeing influences survival, so investing in these aspects of personal health will help long term.
In this presentation Dr Toby Ford has put together an entertaining collection of stories and experiences in medical practice to address the subject of stress and how it can be effectively managed to reduce potential health risks.
Toby likes to involve the audience in the discussion of how to achieve balance and coping ability through some activities he has developed.
His study into “good copers” and how they manage pressure every day will help to identify some specific strategies and tools that the audience may take out with them and apply straight away in their lives.
He will also present some common health problems and how they too can be avoided.
Topic Area: Health and Wellbeing
When Things Drop Off, Fall Out and Don’t Work Anymore
This presentation focuses on the learnings of current health trends in working age men and women and how these can be used to design activities most suited for their busy schedules.
The explanation of common soft mental health problems that working aged Australians present with is sometimes complex and there are a number of different ways that these can be approached by general practitioners. These include “onion ringing”, age transitions and self care concepts.
Dr Ford uses his trademark stories from his years of experience in the city as well as the bush to highlight the importance of preventative health measures to avoid the dropping off and falling out effect.
Coughs, Colds and Sore Holes
This is a talk of 1-1.5 hours and includes the 10 top health problems that men and women face in our country today. Not afraid to poke fun at various investigations one might need and the possible outcomes, Dr Ford is committed to making sure the audience knows what they have to do and when.
As a result of this talk many people have discovered a health problem and got in and had it fixed before it was too late.
Suitable as a motivator for corporate groups it can lay the foundation for starting a health program in the workplace.
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