I first was introduced to rural generalism when I was in first-year medical school,
they were the sort of doctors that you see on TV shows that deliver babies, that do their own
anaesthetics, that do their surgery, that run the ED, that get called up in the middle
of the night and they just had the most amazing stories and the most amazing skills and I
said I want that.
You’re about to go into the general practice
part of our training so we needed a town that was large enough that had practices and positions
for two of us at the same time. We were fortunate enough that myself and my
husband could both get a job in the same town so that was part of our rationale for choosing
the Tablelands, but it’s also paradise.
Each town on the Tablelands is quite unique
so you can train in Malanda or Yungaburra, Atherton or Mareeba and you will find that
you can work within rural hospitals and do procedural work such as obstetrics and anaesthetics
but you can also work in general practice where you get to see the whole gamut of general
practice presentations. I feel like I get quite a broad experience
of practice up here so most things we are able to manage ourselves and most things patients
want us to be able to manage, I also had a period of time in Indigenous health and they
had a specific Indigenous health workshop, from that point of view so it builds a broad
range of skills, it also builds a confidence in you own abilities.
So anything from paediatric presentations through to visiting aged care nursing homes
as well as doing a lot of skin cancer surgery, a lot of farmers health, occupational health
type things as well. You get to see a lot more and get to hang on to your patients a lot more.
You actually get to know the families and
it’s much more of a community feel I suppose then the big cities where you might see someone
once and then never again. In country towns you see the Mum while she’s pregnant, you
see her baby for the vaccinations, you see her husband for whatever he's got going on
and I think you can give a much better level of care to someone when you’ve got that
breadth knowledge about them.
It’s a really well-supported position, when
you’re on at night you’re the only doctor in the hospital but there’s also someone
you can call so it’s a really good intermediate step while you're stepping up to running the ED.
The training's much more personal as well,
really get that one on one consultant time or senior reg time that means that you come
ahead in leaps and bounds and you actually get a proper understanding of what you’ve been taught.
The Atherton Tablelands is a great place to
live, two of my children are currently working on a mango farm just outside of Mareeba so
they’ve been picking and packing mangoes, you know it’s such a great opportunity for
them as a holiday job.
Far North Queensland is paradise, it’s absolutely
stunning, there’s so much to do, so we’ve got the reef that’s only an hour and a half away,
we’ve got the Daintree which is only an hour and a half away, we’ve got pristine lakes that
you can swim in, you can water-ski on, you can stand up paddleboard
you can kayak.
Lake Tinaroo you’re able to take the dog there, the dog loves swimming so that’s his best chance to do it,
it’s a really nice relaxed area, kind of get to decompress a little bit.
One of the places we like to go is Mt. Baldy, it’s just near Atherton, it’s a mountain that overlooks Atherton, it’s a very nice walk up to the top of the Mountain
that shows the whole of the Tablelands
Love going to Millaa Millaa falls, beautiful falls just round the corner
and it’s actually a circle with a whole number of waterfalls.
It’s quite nice knowing that when you go down to Woollies and you see them down there and they say
‘hey doc, how’s it going’, I don’t know it’s just this such wonderful community feel.