Western NSW Careers

[Rima Chaurisa, Nurse Unit Manager, Dubbo Hospital]

I came to Sydney where it was a great platform.

I learned a lot that's where it gave me confidence to explore outside my box and it showed me my capabilities, like you know what can I achieve.

And but after I met my husband had a family, my daughter was one and a half and she was playing with a laptop and iPad and it was raining outside and we lived in a very small unit it was like a covered world and I thought, well when I was growing up it was so much fun and look at her what I am giving like you know, that's what I am providing her and I was like nah I need to change, yeah.

I came from small country, a small place in a small country from a village and Dubbo, when we came to Dubbo we were like this is the weather is similar to where I come from and yeah this was it.

It is very, very rewarding, it is, you feel sense of satisfaction because either there is some like you know there is always issues that you need to solve and you know when you you are giving your best your 100 percent you feel so rewarded when you go home you feel that sense of satisfaction and that's what I feel, yeah it's really great to work here.

Like you know when when people say work life balance this is the example this is the prime example, I can spend so much time with my daughter we and she has got two best best friends, so we have got very social activities going together. 

We go to park every weekend there is some sort of function that I am yeah like you know it's home away from home i feel very, very, very, very connected and I feel really homely.

I would say there's heaps and heaps of potential and opportunities there's work-life balance, like you know when you have got great career which is backed by your family life and it takes off all the boxes doesn't it.

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Dubbo Hospital Careers
A move to Dubbo could make all the difference!
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[Dr Kate Crossley - Neurologist, Dubbo Hospital]

Hi, I'm Dr Kate Crossley, Neurologist at Dubbo Hospital.

I'm proud to call myself a pioneer in public neurology services in Western New South Wales, but now the demand for the service is outgrowing me and I need your help. A move to Dubbo could be all the difference you need to make.

It's really exciting actually because there's there's so many things that have improved and changed as a result of having permanent staff here myself really in neurology. 

I think some of the biggest achievements that I'm proudest of include the stroke pathways, so I've been able to develop and implement a new stroke pathway that's evidence-based medicine that is improving the care of patients throughout Western New South Wales and that's been a huge reward and then obviously the other major thing i'm really proud about is the development of the neuro physiology service, so this is the first public neuro physiology service west of the Blue Mountains and it provides EEG and nerve conduction studies to all patients, inpatients, outpatients and that's just such a vital piece of investigative medicine to have here.

Something that I really find rewarding is that there's the University of Sydney Medical School here as well and so I have regular teaching sessions with medical students. I also do some lectures to the students and to the junior medical officers which is really good fun and you get a much closer bond with the junior colleagues here than you do in city hospitals.

One of the things that was a bit scary to me moving to the country was the thought that I would lose that collegiality and neurology is a specialty where you really rely heavily on having peers available to discuss cases, but what I've been able to do here is to have meetings with the neurologists down in Orange and also like peers at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and that's enabled me to share those cases with with my peers.

I've also been able to attend lots of international and Australian conferences to keep my education levels up and the hospital is very supportive of all those activities to keep us abreast of current medicine which has been very reassuring for me in terms of my current knowledge and professional development.

There's lots of things that I'd really like to do here in Dubbo to build the neurology services, I'd love to have a neuro-vestibular laboratory here, I'd love to start neuro maternity clinics to focus on people who are pregnant and have neurological issues. Obviously, there's work still to be done with building the stroke unit here, there's such a lot of new research happening in stroke medicine and it would be good to make Dubbo part of that research community as well but I can't do all those things here by myself unfortunately and I really need other neurologists to come and join me to help build this service.

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Dubbo Hospital Careers
A move to Dubbo could make all the difference!
@dubbohospitalcareers

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Why the move to Dubbo?

[Dr James Collett, Kidney Specialist - Dubbo Hospital]

So, we were living in Darwin um during my last year of training in Darwin and we had an interest in healthcare in rural areas I guess but I'm always from Sydney lived and grew up in Sydney but realised in Darwin that maybe not going back to Sydney was a good idea and a job came up basically in Dubbo as a specialist and they're hard to get in Sydney um and I thought the opportunities that I could get early on in Dubbo far outweighed the ones that would be available in Sydney and battling away in Sydney for years to try and get a similar position and uh we decided to come here and and check it out and uh there was no job for Melinda but um that seemed to work itself out as well.

[Inteviewer]

So what did you think about that idea when it first came up, Melinda?

[Melinda Collett]

Ah, look I think it's safe to say I was pretty hesitant about it, um I had not been to Dubbo except for a weekend before James had been here as a junior doctor, so I'd come and done the zoo and then gone back home, so when the idea arose i was more anxious than James about it but James had known two of the other kidney specialists and had had a really good time working with them as a junior doctor so I guess the biggest thing was taking that leap of faith and you know coming to to see how it went.

[Dr James Collett, Kidney Specialist - Dubbo Hospital]

I think you laughed when i suggested it initially.

[Melinda Collett]

But uh you know Dubbo has worked out really well we're both having an absolute ball. I am enjoying it far more than what I thought I would and now i just need to convince my family that as well because they're still a little bit uncertain about us being here but no, we've really settled into life very, very quickly in Dubbo and uh yeah definitely having a great time.

[Inteviewer]

So what is it about dubbo that you love?

[Melinda Collett]

Do you want to go?

[Dr James Collett, Kidney Specialist - Dubbo Hospital]

Um look i think firstly work's really good, um we both love work at the moment and for me the colleagues I work with are all young and dynamic and I think in a rural area that's actually unusual but there's a whole bunch of us. I'm you know you know mid to late 30s so social things are great, so i think yeah work certainly for me um and lifestyle you know things are just simpler in Dubbo and we really like that it's seven minutes to work um you cut back a lot of time that you normally spend in sydney traveling by actually doing things you want to do and we've made friends outside of work and everyone in dubbo at work or not are just really friendly and nice and yeah we've really enjoyed that.

[Inteviewer]

Do you feel like you're missing out not living in the city?

[Melinda Collett]

No

[Dr James Collett, Kidney Specialist - Dubbo Hospital]

That was quick, no I think um I'm surprised how little we we feel like we're missing out when we started here everyone sold it to us and said oh look you can still go back to Sydney and look Dubbo is amazingly well serviced and I think there's seven flights a day but um and we thought oh well we can still do that but i mean i haven't been back to Sydney for six months until last week and uh Melinda's only been back a couple of times and we've had a lot of visitors mostly family because again our family come out here and spend a week and actually we get better quality time with them that way than if we went to Sydney and um yeah there's nothing really in Sydney, uh other than family.

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Dubbo Hospital Careers
A move to Dubbo could make all the difference!
Apply at https://www.nsw.gov.au/health/wnswlhd/careers
@dubbohospitalcareers