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do a good history because 80% of your
diagnosing can be done from a history
if you do it well. They’d be the three big
things I’d tell a student going rurally.
What has been one of your
best experiences working in
these remote communities?
The best experience I’ve had in a rural
setting is when I worked as a student
on placement with a GP at St George.
St George is a small town six hours
from Brisbane and I was lucky to work
with a GP who had worked in the town
for 40 years. The best part of working
with her was that I got to see how she
approached her patients and their care.
As an example, a patient came to see her
who had amental health issue. Shewas not
just able to treat that personwithwhat they
toldher intheactual interview, shewas able
to treat them from a holistic point of view.
She knew their mother, their father, their
brothers their sisters, and she was able to
globally, in a way, look after this patient.
And it just astounds me at the end of the
day that we saw about 20 patients, every
single patient had a different issue - there
was not one issue that was repeated. So
people who say when you go rural you
only do the same thing over and over,
they’re definitely wrong. Every patient
we saw was different, but every patient
we saw, she knew their background.
She knew, they’re the teacher that worked
at such and such and it’s been really tough
down at the school lately so that’s probably
why she’s come to us with that problem.
The biggest advantages
I see for living in a rural
area would be the fact that
you’re part of a community.
That sense of close-knit
community, that’s a big
draw card for me
.
That ability to have the knowledge of how
to treat her patient better and how to look
after her patient, the ability to holistically
look after them and the continuity of care
that you could see she had for all of her
patients. That was a big wow moment
for me, that’s what really cemented
my idea of being a rural GP because,
you just can’t do that in the city and so
that was a really big moment for me.
What have you experienced
in remote Australia that
has changed your world
view?
Something that really changed my world
view was when I was on placement in
a little island called Elcho Island. It’s a
little island off the top coast of Australia,
about a two hours flight from Darwin.
It’s a community of about two and a half
thousand Aboriginal people and when