Scholarship recipients ready to make a shift to the Border's healthcare scene

High school graduates of 2023, Georgie Salinger from Albury High School, Ryan White from Xavier High, Albury, and Siddharth John from The Scots School, Albury, have each been awarded a $5000 scholarship for their medical studies at a ceremony on Monday, April 29.

Mr John and Miss Salinger attended the ceremony virtually from the University of New South Wales Rural Clinical Campus in Port Macquarie, where they have started their second trimester for the year.

The medical scholarship program, run by Albury Council and The University of NSW, has given Mr White financial assistance so he can follow his aspirations of changing the rural and regional healthcare system.

"I think we in the country, we struggle a lot with actually retaining doctors and keeping doctors and it's shown with the University of New South Wales and their rural campuses that people who train in the country are more likely to stay in the country," he said.

"I think looking at the family situation and dad with his specialists, we've got to travel to Sydney just to get a specialist.

"Whereas if I can train and come back to the country after specialisation and provide that service in the country, I think I can make a little bit of a difference in the problem that is rural health care at the moment."

His inspiration to join the medical field was heavily influenced by his father, who has Parkinson's disease and travels to Sydney every six months for treatment.

"There are many people in the same situation as us who have to travel, whether it's up to Sydney, which is five hours or even just down to Melbourne, which is three hours," he said.

"If I can go and specialise and then come back and change that for at least some people, that's a positive difference that won't change the issue of a real health, but it will at least make a difference in bringing healthcare to the country."

Mr White is originally from Albury but has moved to Wagga to study his degree at their University of New South Wales Rural Clinical Campus.

He hopes to move back to Albury in his third year and has an interest in cardiothoracic surgery, but is open to exploring different options.

He was also inspired to enter the field by Albury-Wodonga's University of New South Wales Rural Clinical Campus' medical education director, Dr Mark Norden, who he did work experience with in 2022.

"Just seeing how Dr. Norden had such close relationship and was able to influence and have a really positive impact on the lives of his patients and how he went about practising medicine, it was really, really inspiring," he said.

"That's what made me want to really try and pursue getting into medicine because it is really competitive I was quite worried, but we got there."

Dr Norden said the scholarship allows for students to train in their local areas and is a great initiative in increasing regional and rural access to doctors.

He said to grow the number of doctors in the area, "we have to get a number of ducks in a row."

"One, we need to have students from a rural background doing medicine, which is helping," he said.

"Two, we need them to train rurally, which is definitely helping.

"Third, we need them to undertake their postgraduate work, work locally.

"And then I guess the fourth one is they've got to fall in love [with the job] early, but if we get them here long enough, that will happen."

The medical scholarship program has been running since 2007 and has now supported 31 students.

Albury Mayor Kylie King said, "the goal and aspiration of the scholarship is to really encourage students to consider the regional areas and to support them on their journey, but also to consider returning when they're qualified and wherever their journey takes them to."