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On the second day, we fly from Weipa
to the second community and we’ll
do a clinic for the whole day and then
at the end of that day, we fly back to
Weipa. And then on the third day we
fly from Weipa to the third community
and fly back to Cairns at the end of it,
and then we come home the day after.
What is different about
working in rural and
remote areas?
The first thing would be that you’re really
working under a strict time frame. Not
to say that things aren’t busy in urban
hospitals, they definitely are, but in
remote areas, when you’re flying in and
flying out of a community, you have to
be finished by a particular time at the
end of the day so you can fly out. So
there is that time pressure to make sure
that you’ve seen the children, because
most of our patients are children, and
have everything done within that time
frame. So, I think that is quite different.
Another thing that’s different is the
investigations and the sorts of things
that you can actually do. In a big urban
hospital, you can send someone for scans
and you can send someone for tests and
you can send them for small procedures.
But, when you’re actually making those
decisions in a remote area you have to
factor in: How far away is that test? Does
that person have to fly to Cairns? Is that
flight three hours? How much is that
flight going to cost? And does this patient
really need this or can we make do with
something else? So, there’s a certain
sense of compromise that you wouldn’t
see in a larger tertiary hospital in a city.
Another thing is the distribution of staff
that you see. So, for some of these smaller
communities it will actually be a small
primary health care clinic and often there
won’t be a single doctor in the actual clinic.
So, you’ll have a mix of Indigenous
Health Care Workers, Nurses, Nurse
Practitioners, and other staff. You’ll also
have a lot of specialists that fly in and fly
out so they’ll just be there for the day, just
like we are, in our specialist outreach team.
I think that’s really different because
you’ve really got that different team
dynamic but it’s also smaller and a lot
more friendly, so you get to know a
lot of faces, you see people regularly.
Sometimes with the fly in - fly out, you
actually fly into one community with a
group and then see them two days later
at a different community, so it is quite fun
and you do end up on a similar circuit.
‘If you want to see the
social determinants
of health in practice
then going to a remote
Indigenous community
is a really great thing
to do.’