Take it from a country kid … you’ll be valued Doc
Growing up in the small country town of Mount Beauty, the impact of a new doctor arriving could be felt across all pockets of the community – not just in the local medical centre or in our tiny hospital.
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My memories of our local doctors are only positive, so when an opportunity came along to point medical professionals in the direction of rural and remote placements, the country girl in me did a happy little skip and my mind (and heart) was taken back to the rural community I grew up in.
Mount Beauty has a population of around 2000. The farming land holds generations, the mountains and snow attract the outdoors-types, and the town grows substantially as the ‘out of towners’ roll in to enjoy this little slice of heaven. The population is diverse, the lifestyle offers a lot, and with that comes a wide, varied and interesting range of clinical practice.
We didn’t need to travel the 90 kilometres to our nearest regional city for a medical appointment. The doctors in my town were who we saw for immunisations for our first overseas holidays. They x-rayed my sister’s broken leg, monitored my concussion, sorted out my Dad and his dinky heart on a number of occasions (you really must stop hill-bounding now you’re coming up to 70 Dad), and responded to his anaphylactic reaction to an ant bite recently.
They’ve delivered my friends’ babies locally, and been involved in search and rescue missions when bushwalkers have been lost in the mountains. They have delivered safe sex talks at local schools, greeted ambulances transporting overly ambitious snowboarders off the slopes and occasionally saved the odd local with a snake-bitten ankle. They have been the first line of detection and referral for those with more serious diseases and conditions, and played an important role in ongoing support and monitoring.
Many of these wonderful rural doctors – now with the new generation name of ‘Rural Generalists’ - are trained with advanced skills and are regularly rostered to the regional base hospital where they gain additional exposure to specialist skills and further their professional experience.
Access to exceptional doctors and the availability of local health services have also been influential factors in active retirees deciding to move to Mount Beauty – with knock-on economic benefits to local businesses. And doctors moving to town with their clever kids (doctors always have clever kids!) have benefitted the local schools and cajoled their classmates on academically.
I work for the Health and Education Training Institute in NSW, which manages the state’s Rural Generalist Training Program. The program doesn’t cover positions in the glorious alpine town of Mounty Beauty in country Victoria, and it can’t guarantee your kids will be clever. It does, however, play a key role in developing a medical workforce with advanced skills to service almost two million people who call rural and regional NSW home.
If you are a junior doctor looking for an adventure, dreaming of a tree or sea change, or returning to the region you grew up in, then please take a look at the Rural General Training Program and consider applying. Take it from this country kid – you’ll be valued.
