Why Western NSW

[On-screen text]

Challenge yourself
Make an impact
Shape the future

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.

[On-screen text]

Challenge yourself
Make an impact
Shape the future
Join us

[On-screen text]

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.

[On-screen text]

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

[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.

[On-screen text]

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

[On-screen text]
Nursing and midwifery
Every person
Every time
Exceptional care

Theatres - Dubbo Base Hospital

[Nurse]

I'm just getting an urgent cesarean section down, so you can go and have the girls in one.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

I can do that. My name is Holly and I am a Registered Nurse working in Dubbo Theatres. I graduated uni in 2019 and started with New South Wales Health in the GradStart program, which enabled me to transition into my nursing career
with a little bit more support from educators and other nurses.

There's always so much to learn as a nurse so it sort of just enabled me to continue learning as I was practicing and starting my nursing career.

Know what we're doing for you today?

[Patient]

Yeah.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

Are you warm enough?

[Patient]

Yeah.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

Comfortable?

[Patient]

No worries at all.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

Perfect, all right, I'll see you in there in a minute.

[Patient]

Thanks Holly.

[Cameron - GradStart Registered Nurse]

Just let me know all right if you need anything. Do you need anything? Buzz me if you need me, ok?

My name is Cameron, I am a new Grad RN at Dubbo Base Hospital.

The last four weeks of being a new Grad RN, I felt very supported. We've actually got quite a lot of mentors and buddies so we've got our educators as I've got Hayley in G Ward.

Last but not least. Perfect

The order is one gram and we've got normal saline 500, ends in and September 22.

[Hayley]

Fabulous.

[Cameron - GradStart Registered Nurse]

It's a really good culture, especially where i am at the moment. We're doing 3 rotations over 12 months so I'm in G Ward, for another 2 months I believe?

I hope that I go to the ICU.

I'm gonna increase the infusion rate to a bit higher, okay?

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

I did my first rotation at Dubbo Hospital in the operating theatre, so in the perioperative environment. It was completely new to me, all of it, but I just loved it. I loved standing right beside the surgeon and helping them and knowing that I'm helping the patient as well.

[Cameron - GradStart Registered Nurse]

In Dubbo you can say hi to most people and they'll say hi back. I've built quite a life here with just work and you know some of them, these nurses have become my closest friends.

So, I'm actually a Newcastle boy. I moved here to start studying my EN, so I decided to get back into football, soccer. I've coached the under eights and I also play first and second grades, so I play for South Dubbo Wanderers. It's my second family.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

I just love the Dubbo community, everything you need is in Dubbo and the fact that the hospital is expanding so much is helping us, in a, from a health point of view. My fiance lives in Wellington, which is only 30 minutes away. We, we're
gonna build Geary, which is halfway between the two.

[Cameron - GradStart Registered Nurse]

So, Robin, we're just going to take you down to the transit lounge, okay?

The best thing about nursing is you can make a difference. We are lucky enough to have a massive impact on patients lives.

[Holly - Registered Nurse]

Yeah, I'm very, very lucky I love what I do. I would 100 recommend the GradStart Program. The support that the educators give you is amazing, there's always someone around to help when you're a GradStart nurse. There's so many resources available to you as a grad start nurse so it's, it was just a fantastic start to my nursing career. I don't have one regret at all about applying for a GradStart position with New South Wales Health.

[On-screen text]

NSW Helath Nursing and Midwifery Office
GradStart Nursing and Midwifery recruitment
health.nsw.gov.au/nursing/employment/Pages

[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.

[On-screen text]

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

[on-screen text]

Careers and canapes

Medical students and JMOs talk to specialists about their career future

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

The aim of this event really is to showcase the entirety of the specialties on offer at orange health service and also to provide a networking event between the junior doctors the senior medical students as well as the senior specialists

[Associate Professor Catherine Hawke - Deputy Head University of Sydney School of Rural Health]

Some of these students only spend a year with us, the other time they are in actually in metropolitan areas, where it would probably be very hard to get such a lovely experience as being able to talk informally to consultants having a drink and delicious food.

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

Today it's very informal, very casual as you can see,  we've got a few specialists in groups arranged in tables and the students and junior doctors will take eight minutes at each table like a speed dating service just but for medicine and for doctors.

[Dr Xavier Fitzgerald - RMO, Orange Health Service]

I learned plenty tonight i learned a lot and i think the best part about all the clinicians here and you speak to people about what you want to do and they are just you know very happy to just, you know, either tell you that there's other options or there's things available, or help you facilitate what you want.

[Dr Jackson Blythe - RMO, Orange Health Service]

The benefit of events like tonight is that you really are shown different perspectives and different ways of seeing career paths -  you're really shown how flexible medicine can be as a career and the options that are available to you within Orange.

[Dr Katie Hobbs - JMO, Orange Health Service]

Tonight it's been really good in terms of being able to talk to a whole bunch of different surgical specialties as well as O&G and then just to hear little bits and pieces from different specialties that perhaps I haven't really heard much about or people I haven't really met with or interacted with before, as well as just meeting people who I work with in the hospital or different specialties that I'll have to interact with and building some rapport.

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

I think these events are so important. My main purpose for coming this evening was to talk to the interns and residents about the things that I wish i had been told as I came up through my training. I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about you know taking time out from your training exploring other things, taking time to travel and really get to know yourself as a person before you decide on a specialty.

[Dr Clair Whelan - Urological Surgeon, Director of Surgery, Orange Health Service]

One of the main reasons I want to come was to fly the flag for obviously for surgical specialties in general but also just that connection with the medical students we don't necessarily get all the time but we get to do a little bit extra. It's always interesting to see how early people have started to think about what they're going to do and where they're going to work and having such variety in the kinds of things they're interested in.

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

I think the main questions for Dr Zelinski and I are asked about is why we enjoy the specialty I think that you know there's a lot of people's perceptions of oncology is that it's a very sad specialty and you know how do we deal with that, what are the things that make us tick, what do we enjoy the most about our job. We see patients that they're most vulnerable and it is a real privilege to look after them, so sharing that with the trainees today and helping them understand that about our specialty.

[Dr Jackson Blythe - RMO, Orange Health Service]

I mean a lot of the advice we're getting tonight is more general you know, speaking to an orthopedic surgeon not about training towards orthopedic fellowship, but what makes a good life as a doctorand how to balance your needs with developing your medical career.

[on-screen text]

Challenge yourself
Make an impact
Shape the future

Join us

[Sirens wail]

You could have someone who literally is moments from dying

[Clock ticking]

and then you could be the person that ultimately saves someone's life. I don't think there's anything better than that.

[Khyarne - Junior Medical Officer]

My name is Khyarne and I'm an Emergency doctor here in Dubbo.

What makes me a good emergency doctor is that I like a fast-paced environment. I seek a challenge. Everyone that hits our front door,  you never know what you're going to get

I grew up in Dubbo and then made the decision to go to Sydney and study at the University of New South Wales. Through that time, I realised that I'm very passionate about rural and remote health, so that's sort of what drove me to to come home and what better place to come than your own hometown and give back to your own community.

Being an Indigenous doctor, I'm very understanding of the social aspects of health we are really setting the scene. We cater to a significant portion of Western New South Wales. We see people from remote communities who might be three and a half hours away from our base and so we already are having to start to coordinate their care.

We have to think outside the square sometimes and it makes the the medicine we do really interesting and rewarding.

Being a trainee here you get the opportunity to be hands-on straight away leading you know resus scenarios. You will be the one performing procedures.  You're obviously supported but you'll be the one actually guiding your patients care. I'm always upskilling, learning, growing as a doctor. 

My supervisors are very supportive, they all appreciate the the demand that our work life puts on us, so they're certainly there to support you and and make sure that you are doing okay.

Dubbo, I think is a fantastic place. We're in a great location but it's also just a beautiful community to live in. One of my favorite things to do is to find a nice little quiet spot down by the river, it's beautiful.

If you're very passionate about emergency medicine, you have a real opportunity to work with an amazing team and make a really big impact on your patients and their families.

[On-screen text]

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

Brett Chambers - Virtual Clinical Pharmacy Service

We've got a problem which happens right around Australia and actually across the world where we've got people spread out  over a very large geographical area and it's not cost effective or feasible to have a pharmacist at each of our health services in our district so  what we've done is we're using virtual Healthcare, so things like video conferencing to take pharmacists to the patients at the bedside and we're able to help patients and doctors and nursing staff to safely use medications at their hospital.

I remember a case where I saw  a patient at one of our small rural hospitals and he'd come in becoming increasingly unwell unable to keep food down and it turns out it was actually caused by one of his medications and, you know, the doctor called me and said I think this is related to medications I'm not really sure.

Through interviewing the patient and going through his story and looking at his laboratory results, it was clear to me that it was caused by a medication and were able to quickly fix that, reduce the dose  right down and and get him out of Hospital

[on-screen text]

Apply now to work in regional NSW

iworkfor.nsw.gov.au