Medical careers

[Bronwyn - Junior Medical Officer]

You can probably get a sense from the surroundings that it's a very unique place there's like oh, there's a tractor. How country.

I am Bronwyn and I'm a Junior Medical Officer working as a Psychiatry Registrar at Bloomfield Hospital in Orange.

I'm from Brisbane and I moved to New South Wales for medical school and through a number of country rotations it really sold me on country life.

What I love about working in a regional centre in Psychiatry is that you get a lot of hands-on experience that you wouldn't necessarily get in the city. There's fantastic mentorship with leaders in their fields, so I don't miss out on anything

It's a really special place for patients as well. We've got a lot of long-stay units here to allow patients the time and space to recover and transform their lives rather than just getting over the acute illness or stumble in their life.

My typical day, I get to start with a multi-disciplinary team meeting, which is nursing led and it's a nice relaxed way to start by listening to my colleagues and collaborating together. We can figure out who actually needs the time and space to be able to speak to us at length, rather than rounding on every single patient as other specialties tend to do. 

There's usually time and space in your day to be able to fit in everything including collaborating with your peers, a bit of peer review and support.

I think a lot of people can find mental health a confronting or depressing field but I actually have seen it as the total opposite, you can't really have general health and wellbeing without good mental health.

In psychiatry, the world is your oyster as far as building your career goes. Our understanding of the mind is improving all the time in psychiatry. We're kind of at a frontier of medicine really.

One thing that orange hospital is able to provide is not just a job but it's also a lifestyle and it's a community. It's a lot easier to have a good work-life balance, you can get home before sunset every day.

The next steps for me involves finishing my training and finding a consultant position in a hospital that is looking for a psychiatrist and that's one thing that's great about country practice is that there's plenty of jobs available.

My favourite part of my job is when we do get a win with the patient. It might be something as small as helping someone reconnect with their family members but those are really big things for me as a doctor.

You get to really make a difference in people's lives.

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Make a bigger difference as a Junior Medical Officer in NSW.
health.nsw.gov.au/jmo-apply

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Working as a GP VMO in Western NSW

[Dr Shannon Nott - Director of Rural Medical Services, Western NSW Local Health District]

Working as a rural generalist in Western New South Wales Local Health District is an exciting and rewarding career path.

First of all you get to be able to service some of Australia's most iconic outback rural communities and be able to practice a full gamut of medicine from quality primary care in the community through to emergency department presentations through to inpatients well so you'd be able to get to follow patients through the healthcare continuums from pretty much cradle to grave

[Dr Sally Plunkett, Dunedoo]

I really enjoy the the balance of my work as a through the general practice and then in through the E.D looking after the hospital patients and then as well, I  also provide aged care services too. I love the variety in my work.

[Dr Robin Williams, Molong]

More than anything, I wanted to be a GP with visiting rights at a hospital because I think in order to work in a small community it's great to have that continuity of care.

[Dr Kellie Mathieson, Nyngan]

The best thing about rural general medicine would have to be the variety you know you're managing the patient from start to finish, you're seeing the follow-up, you're seeing things that we don't often see so much in the city you know we manage far beyond the scope of what some city doctors do so we really get that interaction from the start to finish with the patient.

[Dr Priyantha Wijesurendra, Narromine]

You are at the coal face, you get to do that you know you get to put those lines in, you get to see the patients when they're really sick and you're part of a community that's very appreciative of you being there.

[Dr Kellie Mathieson, Nyngan]

And that for me is really rewarding to see what i'm doing is actually making a difference out here. It's not a case where you just see a patient and then you never hear what happens to them again. Mostly for me it's the community side being valued as being part of the community being able to do something make a difference for a small community it's very rewarding work.

[Dr Shannon Nott - Director of Rural Medical Services, Western NSW Local Health District]

The virtual rural general service, which is the first in Australia, allow us to be able to support rural and remote health professionals in in rural environments our vcare service allows us to be able to provide that specialist emergency care to patients alongside our rural generalists on the ground.

[Dr Sally Plunkett, Dunedoo]

With my VMO I'm supported overnight with the virtual rural doctor service so it means i'm able to find a real balance with my work and my personal life.

[Dr Priyantha Wijesurendra, Narromine]

The VRGS is available to provide overnight coverage for the stuff that you don't necessarily need to be rung about okay at two o'clock in the morning

[Dr Robin Williams, Molong]

That's where the v care really comes into its own because that means that I'm not on call every day um 24 hours a day i'm there i will do my work but I've got support and there's a backup.

[Dr Priyantha Wijesurendra, Narromine]

The work was really good it was rewarding and you know you get to do stuff that you wouldn't normally do in you know a place like you know Sydney or Melbourne and the smaller towns are nicer in that sense. Yeah it's more sense of community in a sense.

[Dr Shannon Nott - Director of Rural Medical Services, Western NSW Local Health District]

So one of the things that you know when you work for Western New South Wales as a rural generalist is that we have your back and that your colleagues have your back and that regardless of whether you live in the most remote community in our region or one of the larger district hospitals you've got a network of peers who will work with you to provide excellent healthcare.

[Dr Kellie Mathieson, Nyngan]

I've got a lot more variety out here I see a greater range of presentations and i have greater work with greater collaboration with specialists in town you know they all know me I know them I can pick up the phone and call them on their mobile any time in the day or night for a bit of advice and those great working relationships, which i just find my colleagues in the city don't have those same sort of connections which are much easier to make when you're out in the country, people know who you are.

[Dr Shannon Nott - Director of Rural Medical Services, Western NSW Local Health District]

Many of our rural generalists across Western New South Wales maintain areas of interest outside of I suppose the clinical day-to-day.

[Dr Kellie Mathieson, Nyngan]

Been on the university admissions board for the University of Wollongong for the interviews for med students. Another thing that i'm involved with is the training of registrars.

[Dr Robin Williams, Molong]

I've been sort of hijacked by the Primary Health Network and they asked me to join their board and I'm now chair of the Primary Health Network for Western New South Wales, which is a very interesting role. So that the medicine itself is fascinating, you're not isolated uh you know and you can really feel that you make a contribution to your patients lives which is what i went into medicine for.

[Dr Kellie Mathieson, Nyngan]

I would say come out and do it don't be afraid do it, the reality is if you do it you're going to love it, it's such a great place to work really so much better than working in the city for sure.

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[Dr Budhima Nanayakkara, Director of Pre-vocational Education and Training - Orange Health Service]

The JMO experience in Western NSW

The breadth and depth of work that a JMO has to do is probably a lot more, a lot higher than they do in the city. In the city a lot of times the JMOs might act as paper clerks, but here we get them really actively involved in patient decisions, they can directly communicate with senior staff members and really make a big difference in the patient journey.

[Dr Katie Hobbs, JMO - Orange Health Service]

It's a great hospital, there's lots of different specialties. I found the environment really friendly and as a medical student, and I'm finding as a JMO, being rural has allowed me the opportunity to do a lot more see a lot more and interact a lot more with senior specialists as well as with my junior colleagues.

[Dr Lauren Bradbury, Medical Oncology Staff Specialist and Director of Physicians Training - Orange Health Service]

I think when you work somewhere big like Westmead or North Shore you're very anonymous, whereas here everyone seems to to know everyone it's very easy to get things done and call in favors and speak to a friend of the coffee cart if you need to.

[Dr Xavier Fitzgerald, RMO - Orange Health Service]

A smaller cohort in a smaller community out here. you get much more of the opportunity to pursue the things you're interested in but then also you get the opportunity to explore things that you might not have thought were something that you would enjoy, but then that comes up, so I think that I mean out here the management here and a lot of the doctors are just really happy to give you their time and just to help us like assist you to get to where you want to get to and I think that's uh is it that's special for out here and something that I've loved.

[Dr Budhima Nanayakkara, Director of Pre-vocational Education and Training - Orange Health Service]

We find that the social network here is pretty good, there's a lot of connection in between the JMO community as well as the registrar community and even with the specialist community that people don't find it as isolating as they think.

[Dr Lauren Bradbury, Medical Oncology Staff Specialist and Director of Physicians Training - Orange Health Service]

My trainees who are currently here at the moment from Westmead are just astounded at how friendly everyone is and how easy it is to get things done and order tests and get biopsies and that organised, so they're absolutely loving it here.

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