Well from day dot I always wanted to be a GP from the first year of med school, loved
the idea of being broadly skilled and having emergency skills, anaesthetic skills, surgical
skills and GP skills. It’s a real honour to look after the registrars, I definitely
encourage them to not just think about their clinical time and think about what they can
get out of training but indeed what they can offer their community.
Working in Gympie really fits someone with my personality and what I want to do cause
I'm able to get a basic GP training here then I go up to the hospital and there’s an extension
of that. I'm actually able to get sometimes more complex patients that don’t have GP's
in the region here and so it was good to be able to fill that gap where I can actually
meet them, see them in hospital and then see them here in the clinic.
It gives me the best of both worlds in that you still get emergency presentations to the
GP clinic, plenty of people walk in unwell and you have to look after them and the paramedic
in me comes out and then I also get that continuity of care, I get to see them again and get to
look after their kids or their mums or their neighbours and for me it’s all about the
community which I love. The GP training is 3 years for most people,
4 years for those who've got a specific interest, we offer so many different training pathways,
people can do mixed general practice, mixed hospital time.
So they get time in Ed and looking after the in patients, registrars can do internal medicine
at Gympie hospital they can do anaesthetics, they can do obstetrics the world is your oyster,
you can make the program what you want it to be.
We have set sessions but we also have impromptu conversations in the corridors, my chief virtue
I think is that I make myself available. One of the highlights of the training program
was some of the workshops and we got to go to regional areas around Queensland and meet
other registrars so it’s not just about training on the Sunshine Coast but really
understanding the needs of the whole region. From education point of view it’s not just
a static thing, they’ve taken feedback that they’ve got an evolved our program to fit
our group. In a country area you get to be a lot more
hands on, you get to admit patients to the local hospital, do a few more practical procedures
with a general practice in a city setting. There is more diversity and more opportunities
to spread your wings a little bit more. There’s many benefits to be on the Sunshine
Coast, one is just the pure environment, I mean it’s beautiful, you got the beach,
you got the islands you’ve got surf, you got cities, you got mountains, you got rainforest,
even driving to work is a pleasure here. Were big outdoor people and the beauty of
where we are is that it’s a five minute walk to the beach of a 20 minute drive into
the hinterland and I got the weekends to explore all our amazing national parks.
Every weekend there’s markets here, there's Eumundi markets, there’s Crystal Water markets,
there Witter markets, there’s always something going on, beautiful local produce, local arts
etc. Gympie is amazing for hills, all my goals
is to run up this hill at some point in time. The country virtues are still here people
are kind patient and generous, it’s just a great place to live.
On weekends I travel back to the Sunshine Coast and I do love surfing, I've surfed for
the past 10 years. I also call myself a DJ artist, I like doing more deep chilled music,
like blending and actually mixing and actually putting together an ambiance for the actual
venue. Living by the beach is one of the highlights
of being up here and every single morning I puff and pant to get to the top of the hill
but I get these glimpse of the ocean looking down over Alexandra Beach and it just blows
me away and after 3 years of living there and riding the same route I'm still blown
away every single day so I'm lucky.