Upcoming Retreat: Inaugural Event
Regent Phu Quoc, Vietnam
17–23 January 2027
5 Days. 40 Anaesthesia Colleagues.
One Extraordinary Destination.
25 hours of CPD.
You deserve to be somewhere extraordinary.
Regent Phu Quoc, Vietnam. January 2027.
Sitting quietly in the south of Vietnam, the Regent Phu Quoc is one of South Asia’s finest resorts—a place of long white beaches and water so clear it seems almost improbable. Serene, considered, and world-class, this is the kind of place that makes you wonder why you ever settled for a conference centre in the CBD.
For years it remained Vietnam's best-kept secret.
6 nights at Phu Quoc.
All the hard-to-get CPD hours covered.
25 hours of premium anaesthesia CPD in a truly restorative setting.
Connect. Network. Bring your loved ones.
Join us for 2 retreats per year.
Your CPD is done.
CPD in the mornings.
Afternoons are yours.
Critical reflections at night? Transformative.
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![Structured Learning]()
Morning Structured Learning
Accredited CPD sessions with credible faculty. Practice-relevant, evidence-based, and engaging.
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![Local Discovery]()
Afternoon Local Discovery
Curated experiences in extraordinary places. Time to breathe, explore, and reconnect with yourself.
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![Genuine Connection]()
Evening Genuine Connection
Dinners, conversations, and community with forty colleagues who truly understand.
Speakers
Dr Pooja Agrawal
MBBS, DA, DNB, FANZCA
Built the Perioperative Preadmission Clinic and Acute Pain Service at a regional centre from nothing — then took the show on the road as a regular speaker and attendee at international conferences.
Dr Malcolm Albany
MBBS, BSc(Med), FANZCA, DipClinUS
Twenty years perfecting regional blocks. Still perfecting the golf swing. Fully, unapologetically addicted to pickleball — currently Vietnam's fastest-growing sport.
Chuck Chapman
M.A., LPC
Fifteen years and 20,000 hours helping high-achievers keep performing at the top — without giving up the life that actually matters. Off duty, he throws pottery and sees the world.
Dr Philip Cornish
FANZCA, FFPMANZCA, MD
Award-winning dual fellow in anaesthesia and pain medicine. Happy to challenge the accepted model. Happier still with a great conversation and a good coffee.
Dr Lee Zimmer
BSc, BMBS, FANZCA, DipRA
A decade of regional anaesthesia teaching, combining experience from the UK and Australia to create new RA care pathways; Fellowship programme; and Block Room services. More Rubik’s than Pickleball.
Ready When You Are
Places are limited to forty anaesthetists per retreat. Apply early to secure yours.
Dr Pooja Agrawal
MBBS, DA, DNB, FANZCA
Pooja is a Staff Specialist Anaesthetist at Warrnambool Base Hospital and a Visiting Consultant at St John of God Warrnambool Hospital. She migrated to Australia in 2018 and became a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (FANZCA) in 2021. Since then, she has been based in Warrnambool, where she has become an integral member of the local anaesthetic community.
Originally trained in India at several of the country’s leading medical institutions, Pooja’s clinical interests include regional anaesthesia and perioperative medicine. As the current Supervisor of Training at Warrnambool Base Hospital, she has played a key role in establishing both the Perioperative Preadmission Clinic and the Acute Pain Service, contributing significantly to the development of perioperative care within the region.
An active educator and presenter, Pooja has shared her expertise at national and international conferences across India, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Australia. Her presentations have included live ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia demonstrations, reflecting her commitment to advancing clinical practice and education. She has also served as a workshop instructor at ASURA in recent years. Her teaching spans bedside supervision, trainee mentoring, and formal educational sessions for both nursing and medical staff.
Prior to relocating to Australia, Pooja served as Organising Secretary for several national and international medical conferences in India, gaining valuable experience in medical leadership and professional education.
Outside the operating theatre, she enjoys cooking, dancing, and travelling.
Pooja joined CPD Hero because she believes that outstanding continuing professional development and meaningful travel experiences are not competing priorities—they complement each other, creating richer opportunities for learning, connection, and growth.
Dr Malcolm Albany
MBBS, BSc(Med), FANZCA, DipClinUS
Malcolm is a Specialist Anaesthetist based in Sydney, Australia, holding clinical appointments at Concord Repatriation General Hospital and Northern Beaches Hospital. While he has contributed to the profession through various leadership and administrative roles—including serving as Head of Department and Supervisor of Training (SOT)—his core professional passions lie in quality assurance, clinical education and the mastery of regional anaesthesia.
His career fortunately coincided with the revolutionary introduction of ultrasound technology in regional anaesthesia. Aligning his clinical practice with this passion, he has spent the last 20 years working with two dedicated upper-limb and two lower-limb orthopaedic surgeons. This long-term partnership has allowed him to track the real-world evolution of hundreds of advanced techniques, personally performing thousands of nerve blocks and supervising thousands more.
For the past 18 years, he has actively contributed to the broader anaesthetic community as a regular demonstrator at major domestic and international conferences, including meetings for ASURA, ANZCA, and the Australian Society of Anaesthetists. His current clinical focus areas are optimal block selection and the psychological management of highly anxious patients to help them comfortably access the benefits of regional anaesthesia.
Outside the hospital, Dr Malcolm can usually be found pursuing a few distinct hobbies. He is an enthusiastic but remarkably unaccomplished golfer, an overcompetitive European board game strategist, and a completely addicted pickleball player (and yes, it is currently the fastest-growing sport in Vietnam!). He shares Chuck’s enthusiasm for travel but sadly lacks any pottery skills.
Chuck Chapman
M.A., LPC
Chuck is a licensed clinical psychotherapist, bestselling author, and expert communication facilitator. With fifteen years in private practice and over 20,000 clinical hours, Chuck specialises in helping high-achieving professionals — physicians, executives, and specialists — maintain peak performance without sacrificing their health, relationships, or sense of self.
His work sits at the intersection of psychology, communication, and personal identity, using evidence-informed frameworks for self-awareness and relational intelligence to help driven people understand how their own patterns keep them stuck. Chuck understands the particular pressures that come with high-stakes, high-demand careers, and he brings both clinical depth and hard-won personal wisdom to every room he works in.
Outside the consulting room, Chuck makes pottery, travels the world with his wife Jennifer, and remains genuinely curious about what it means to live well in the second half of life — which, he'll tell you, is exactly what he helps his clients figure out.
Dr Philip Cornish
FANZCA, FFPMANZCA, MD
Philip holds dual fellowship in anaesthesia and pain medicine, and has a doctorate in regional anaesthesia. He has published on difficult airway management, regional anaesthesia from neuraxial techniques through plexus blocks to the tissue plane frontier, and has published on the basic science of pain medicine.
He has won the Gilbert Brown Prize of ANZCA and has twice won the John Ritchie Prize of NZSA. In chronic pain, he went back to first principles, decided the accepted model was inadequate, and designed a new clinical pathway around a better one. The pain-free patients speak for themselves.
He believes the best conversations happen in the margins — over coffee, between sessions, when people stop performing and start talking. He comes to a room like this not to deliver wisdom but to exchange it, because he sees every colleague as someone carrying knowledge and experience worth seeking out. That's exactly why a retreat like this suits him. And why we are genuinely excited to have him as a founding faculty member.
Classical guitarist. Bushwalker. Prepared to challenge scientific dogma. Happy to chat over a coffee.
Dr Lee Zimmer
BSc, BMBS, FANZCA, DipRA
After completing his medical training in the United Kingdom, Lee has spent the last 15 years working as an anaesthetist between Sydney and the Central Coast of NSW. His career in regional anaesthesia (RA) was shaped during a Felowship at Derriford Hospital in the UK, where he had the opportunity to learn from pioneers of then-evolving ultrasound-guided techniques.
Upon returning to the Central Coast, he saw both a chalenge and an opportunity: at the time, ultrasound equipment was scarce and expertise were limited. An enthusiasm to create something new and grow the specialty from the ground up became the cornerstone of his anaesthesia practice.
Lee’s focus on structured RA care pathways has been transformative for the region. In 2016, he introduced a Hip Trauma protocol for neck of femur surgery, followed by a Chest Injury Pathway for at-risk rib fracture patients in 2018. By 2021, he successfully secured ANZCA approval for a dedicated Regional Anaesthesia Fellowship programme, which he continues to coordinate and supervise. Under his leadership, there is now momentum to re-invent trauma flow on the Central Coast with a dedicated regional team and a Block Room that is designed to run parallel to theatres, serve minor orthopaedic trauma outside of theatres and pain management catheters.
Lee holds a Diploma of Regional Anaesthesia from the University of East Anglia and serves as faculty for the University of Sydney’s ‘Anatomy for Anaesthetists’ course and the University of Newcastle’s Cadaveric Regional Anaesthesia Focused Teaching course.
Aside from regional anaesthesia, Lee is also an environmental advocate and campaigner. He has frequently written and spoken on sustainable practice in anaesthesia - of course including regional anaesthesia, but also TIVA and TIVA in kids; the removal of nitrous oxide; lean theatre practice; theatre coffee recycling; and his crowning moment- a record-breaking 3-year-long email thread that eventually led to the agreement for staff to wear cloth hats in theatre!
For fitness, Lee is a fairly dedicated runner but has never played pickleball!
