Dr. Ivo Andrejco

Good day! In case you are wondering who I am and what is this all about. My name is Ivo, rather than Dr. Ivo or Dr. Andrejco(read Andreytzo 😀) I obtained my Master’s degree in General Medicine from Masaryk University in Czechia in 1998 and relocated to Australia shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, I did not pay enough attention in my English classes throughout my schooling years and honestly there were not that many to attend at the time. I arrived in Australia in 1998 and with almost non-existent English language skills I had to start from scratch. I passed Australian Medical council written test in 2004 and had to wait another 18 more months before I could sit clinical exam. After completing AMC licensing requirements I waited another six months before I could start my internship at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney in 2006. I completed my specialty training in Haematology at Westmead Hospital, NSW in 2016. I spent 18 months in palliative care training thinking it would complement my haematology practice and it partially did but I did not feel that I wanted to continue pursuing palliative care training further. I became a Fellow of both the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia in 2017.

I started working as a haematologist and occasionally as a general physician in rural hospitals. I have worked in Dubbo, Orange, Coffs Harbour, Kempsey, Taree, Rockhampton and Launceston. I finally ended up in Cairns which ticked off all of my boxes for a perfect place to settle professionally and personally. I permanently relocated to Cairns in 2024 and I took up a permanent position in Cairns Hospital as Staff Specialist in Haematology. I have always preferred working in underserviced regions as it gives me more satisfaction, lifestyle out of work is less hectic and I can form a closer relationship with community.

Professionally I have to cover wide areas of haematology and look after different conditions including lymphomas, myeloma, leukemias, myeloproliferative neoplasia, cytopenias, iron metabolism disorders, clotting and bleeding disorders. I love medicine and I am passionate about it in general and I have had a few positions as a general physician looking after patients with non-haematological conditions which while pretty busy I enjoyed very much.

In my practice I have always tried to put patients at ease by running my consulations informally and by listening to patients' concerns and needs. I feel that every patient deserves the best care available regardless of whether they are private or public and regardless of any other labels.

I feel more comfortable in clinical settings rather than research and therefore I spend most of my time with patients rather than collecting data and publishing research. We all have something and conducting a research is just not my thing. I approach things with open mind and I am most certainly open to participating in research if it is something I am interested in.

Outside medicine I like fitness and I am avid gym goer. I also like exploring new information technologies and how they interact together. Rather than playing with computers I like to create useful software like this website which I created to share my ideas and knowledge as well as help my colleagues from different fields of medicine to understand common haematological topics and when to refer patients to a haematologist.

Hopefully, I will have time to update the content regularly and offer you useful information. There is a lot lots of information online and it seems solid but I still have patients asking me strange things. I found that AI bots such as ChatGPT can provide solid info but sometimes they are outright wrong. I guess they are still learning 😀