Tropical Medical Training

What’s your current role?
Next year I complete my GP Registrar term. I’m actually combining a variety of part-time jobs – for the last two and a half years, I’ve done clinical work in a GP Practice in Charters Towers, south-west of Townsville. I do two and a half days a week there, plus my on-call load, which is one night a fortnight and one weekend in five, plus a Saturday morning in the Practice every five weeks.
Then, for two days a week, I’m doing an academic post at James Cook University as part of my GP training, which involves some research and also teaching undergraduate medical students. My research looks at the mental health impact of fly-in, fly-out miners in Charters Towers. I’ve presented at a conference and I’m hoping to write this up and get it published. I had a great community response to my study – lots of my patients still ask me how it’s going.
I’m also the Registrar on the board of my regional GP training provider and occasionally I’ll do some hospital work in Charters Towers, where we admit patients privately – but it’s not a big part of my job.
All of this is a great mix because the work is quite complementary. The GP work can be quite intense when you’re seeing patients each day, so teaching gives me time to look at the bigger picture and also keeps up my skills because the students are up-to-date with the cutting edge aspects of medicine.
How did you get to the role that you’re in now?
I was a rural kid and did my high school years in a small town near Townsville. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I did a broad science degree. Through that, I found I was interested in human physiology and always seemed to gravitate to subjects where the lecturers were clinicians. I took three years out, working in retail and then did postgraduate medicine.
I did my internship in Nambour, a small regional hospital. It helped me appreciate the role of a GP as you do interact more closely than in the big hospitals. Then I spent two years as an RMO at Royal Darwin Hospital. I had lots of variety with emergency, obstetrics, paediatrics, palliative care, oncology and haematology. I also did a three month pre-vocational GP placement in a Practice in the town of Jabiru, in Kakadu. It was an interesting mix of everyday General Practice with the mine workers combined with lots of Aboriginal health, including some outreach clinics to the surrounding Aboriginal communities.
My first Practice was in an Aboriginal medical service in Mt Isa, which was very interesting and great experience.
What has the GP training been like for you?
I’ve chosen the Rural Pathway for GP training, but I’m not a rural generalist, which tends to be a more proceduralist GP role. I’m far more interested in the community GP role. I like the consultations and treating relatively well people. I like preventative medicine, I like having elderly patients, I like having little patients …
I really like all that variety together in one place.
My GP mentors have been excellent, providing really good clinical support for me and they are very approachable whenever I’ve asked for help. I’ve never felt my supervisors may have thought I was stupid or that I couldn’t ask questions. I’ve been able to be very open about my deficiencies in dealing with them, so that’s been a really positive thing. It’s actually very collegial.
What would you tell someone considering a career in General Practice?
As a junior doctor, you get to do surgery and medicine and obstetrics, but you only get to see how General Practice operates if you choose to give it a go. I would suggest to every junior doctor that they should do a PGPPP placement to explore General Practice as a possibility for them. It is the one specialty where this kind of placement provides an excellent and rewarding experience.
If you do pursue another specialty, at least you know what General Practice involves, and that can help you in relating to GPs down the track, too. I would really encourage junior doctors to consider it.
What are your plans for the future?
Ideally I would work rurally, but my partner had trouble getting work in a small place like Charters Towers. So, part of the reason I started the academic work in Townsville was to balance us both being able to get work and be fulfilled.
My plans partly depend on all those other things that happen in life. The good thing about General Practice is that when kids come along, and you have a family to consider, General Practice is just so flexible. I could work in an urban setting or a rural setting – you don’t have that flexibility with the specialties.
I do want to continue to balance my academic and clinical work. So, wherever I am – hopefully in a mid-sized place – I can enjoy the mix of community General Practice work and some teaching.


This case study first appeared in the Going Places Magazine, part of the Going Places Network which promotes the choice of General Practice as a career option to prevocational doctors within the hospital system. The Going Places Magazine and the Going Places Network is an initiative from GPRA. For more information visit www.gpaustralia.org.au/goingplaces