This week has been a mixture of medicine, culture, sight-seeing, socializing and lots of eating; everything anyone could ever want out of a rural medical cultural exchange. My clinical timetable this week was a mixture of Emergency Department, time in theatre and one and a half days spent at the GEGAC (gee-jack, a.k.a. Gippsland and East Gippsland Aboriginal Co-operative) and then I spent Friday with the students in their tutorials.

One of the most eye-opening experiences this week was spending time in theatre with the anaesthetists, who were actually GPs with extra training, who spent couple of days a week in theatre.  It was very impressive to see what a wide range of operations they did, as in one theatre list there was general surgery, plastics and gynae procedures. 

On the second day in theatre they had a visiting ophthalmologist performing cataract surgery in one theatre and in the other there was a laparoscopic appendicectomy being performed by one of the local general surgeons with the ingenious technique of using the finger of a sterile glove to collect and remove the appendix in, rather than an expensive Endocatch bag. It was very inspiring to see that by being a rural GP you don’t just have to sit in a GP consult room for the rest of your life, but can still fulfill your dreams of being in theatre, whilst having the ultimate continuity of care with your patients.

On Wednesday night we went to Metung, a beautiful lakeside town, and had dinner with the students who are based at Lakes Entrance (about 40 minutes drive from Bairnsdale). It was great meeting the other students and interesting to learn one of the major differences between our two rural programmes.  I didn’t realise that although you could still opt in to their rural programme most students didn’t choose to be there, compared to NZ where a few students had to get turned away due to it’s popularity.  Although there are a lot more students doing rural placements in Australia, it has a different feel about it when some of the students aren’t so happy about being placed there.

Thursday was spent at the GEGAC clinic, which was really interesting to get an insight into Indigenous health in Australia.  All of the patients were really lovely and a few of them were really great telling me about their cultural heritage.  Non-attendance is a big problem at the clinic with only half of our morning patients showing up, but the patients that did turn up all had very interesting stories to tell.

Friday tutorials with the other students was great, as it was the first time I met all eight of the students that were based in this area.  It was reassuring to know that I was on-par with the students with most general medical knowledge, however Aussie specific teaching such as the ‘Murtagh Model’ had me a bit lost.  On Friday night all of the students met up in Lakes Entrance for dinner at a restaurant, Miriam’s, which served up enormous portions of meat for dinner, yet we still ordered desert and all left feeling painfully full.

Saturday morning was dedicated to sleeping in and recovering from the week’s excitement, before doing more exploring!  In the afternoon we headed out to Paynesville, another lakeside town, where we had lunch on the lakefront in the sun.  We then caught the 1-minute ferry to Raymond Island where my Australian experience was complete when I saw the first koala, who woke up for us, stretched backwards a bit and exposed a cute baby koala all snuggled up.  So cute!

Next we headed out to the Silt Jetties, as recommended by the GP registrar at GEGAC, which is an amazing extension of the banks of the Mitchell River into Lake King.  You can drive all the way out along one bank of the river into the middle of the lake where you are surrounded almost 350 degrees by water.  We timed our arrival perfectly with sunset so a lot of beautiful photos to take home.

I have been having a fantastic experience in Bairnsdale so far.  The people are so welcoming and friendly, the GP’s who also work in the hospital are really inspiring, and the students have been great at taking me out and showing me all of the beautiful spots that surround Bairnsdale.  I’m lucky I still have another whole week to gain more clinical experiences over here, and explore the area further.

Read Gracie’s final blog