Dr. Renee Lim

Renee balances a diverse range of careers uniting her passion for medicine, health and wellbeing, and her belief in the integral value of education to empower people. She also has a great love of performance, which has led to starring roles in theatre, film and television as an actor and presenter.

Current work

When not performing, Renee works in the NSW hospital system as a locum doctor in the areas of emergency medicine, palliative care, and geriatrics for many years, visiting almost every major hospital in the greater Sydney area. While these specialties seem incredibly disparate, Renee has found the different challenges of each discipline integral to treating her patients holistically and with authentic empathic care.

In her role as Director of Program Development at the Pam McLean Centre, she designs educational curriculum for both students and health professionals on communication skills, culture change and dealing with conflict. Renee has also worked with Sydney University, UNSW, Macquarie University, and NSW Health developing educational programs, and her research has been published and presented at both national and international conferences in Communication Teaching.

Renee also works as a consultant, using her various skills and experiences to focus on Engagement, behaviour change and The ‘Human Factor’ in varied contexts. She has worked with Medicines San Frontier, Streetwork, NSW Ambulance, Foodwise, and a number of corporations and is presently the Health Grants Advisor to the Paul Ramsay Foundation. She is also developing a program known as The Value of Kindness in conjunction with KFilms, to encourage humanity in the workplace.

Previous experience

Actor: As an actor, Renee played Mae in the hit ABC series Please Like Me, which won the 2017 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Comedy.

TV: She featured on the long running Australian hospital drama All Saints as Suzi Lau and also as Jung Lim on multi international award winning SBS police drama East West 101. Other shows include medical drama Pulse, all three seasons of Jessica Mauboy’s The Secret Daughter for Channel 7, and Lee Lin Chin’s Weekend Shift, as well as guest roles on Rake, and Bite Club. She has also performed in Belvoir’s The Wolves, the Seymour Centre’s Grace Under Pressure, and Bakehouse’s Dresden, His Mother’s Voice and Coup DeTat.

Food: Her passion for food has led to work on popular SBS series Food Investigators and Destination Flavour. Renee has also teamed up with the Foodwise Team at Do Something – headed by Jon Dee (Planet Ark co-founder and NSW Australian of the Year) to increase awareness and provide solutions for issues surrounding food sustainability.

Presenter: Renee was one of the original presenters on Ask the Doctor – a new ABC series that addresses the state of the nation’s health, the latest in medical treatments and the future of healthcare as we know it.

Mental health: Renee’s empathy and passion for helping other people to ‘find their way’ led her to create the educational multi-platform resource Nay In The Life, which is designed to create an open-dialogue around identity, resilience and mental-health.