Dr Preeya Alexander isn’t afraid of tears

Dr Preeya Alexander wants to change how we relate to medicine.

Dr Alexander is a general practitioner and TV presenter who provides free, accessible health advice on social media. She’s the type of doctor we all want in our lives – kind, knowledgeable and caring. But her approach to medicine – one that does not shy away from emotions – hasn’t always been well-received.  

Dr Alexander remembers one event in particular. It was early in her career when she was working in a hospital as a haematology resident.

“I was on the haematology ward. It was a gruelling shift – you’re on for seven days and off for seven days,” she tells Helen McCabe as part of FW’s Too Much podcast.

“And it was complex medicine – these patients are very, very unwell.”

On that night, there was one patient – a young man – who passed away. 

Dr Alexander had gotten to know the young man and his family well while he was in the ward.

Image credit: University of Adelaide

“I remember a consultant haematologist saying to me, as I was crying – because the patient had been taken to ICU after a code blue – ‘Preeya you’re too emotional, this isn’t part of your job, you need to let it go, you need to move on there are twenty other patients on the ward’,” she recalls. 

At first, the consultant’s words filled Dr Alexander with self-doubt. 

“I left and I remember saying to my husband, to my mum and to my friends, is this making me a bad doctor?’,” she says. 

It took years for Dr Alexander to shake the sense that she should always suppress her emotions. 

“[I only overcame this when I realised] my patients actually keep coming back, and they love me sharing those bits and bobs about my own life,” she says. 

“Sometimes I’m having a tear with my patients if they’ve had a miscarriage or a celebratory tear, if there’s this final conception after so many miscarriages that’s been successful”. 

“I’m really good at medicine, but I’m also human, and I am emotional, and I think that makes people feel safe.”

She describes these moments, as joyous and as heartwrenching as they can be, as a “privilege”. 

“These people come and tell me their deepest darkest things, their highest highs, their lowest lows. I’m their person, they send their kids to me, their parents to me, their partner to me like that is a huge honour,” she says. 

“And, I think a lot of it is because yes, I’m really good at medicine, but I’m also human, and I am emotional, and I think that makes people feel safe.”

Today Dr Alexander sees her emotions as her “superpower”.

“I think my success on social media and as an author, and then a TV presenter, has been partly due to me being too emotional, me being human and actually sharing with the world,” she says. 

“I cut through the BS and I try and keep it really authentic and digestible, and I think people are really sick of this kind of paternalistic model in medicine, which is this doctor standing there and telling you what to do.”

She wants her patients to know that she is human too, someone who struggles at times just like they do. 

“I’m struggling with the juggle, with my kids, with my full plate, trying to eat my rainbows, fit in exercise, trying to manage my stress levels,” she says.

“I’m human and I share that with people.”