I’m writing my final blog post sitting on the train back to Melbourne on a beautiful sunny afternoon looking out over the beautiful green farmland and large blue skies and feeling surprisingly sad about leaving Bairnsdale.  I didn’t expect to get attached so quickly but I’ve meet some amazing people and had a lot of fun on my clinical placements over the last two weeks.  I am very grateful to the Pat Farry Trust for this opportunity, which has reaffirmed my love for rural medicine and the opportunities it provides.

Spending two weeks of class time in Australia is pretty awesome, especially when I think of my fellow city classmates sitting in lecture theatres while I’m having the opportunity to meet other med students and make new friends across the Tasman, as well as having the opportunity to see how my clinical skills hold up on in a different country, great practice for electives next year!  It was great realising that the medicine part of it is basically the same everywhere, it’s just having the local knowledge of the resources available in that centre and the different funded drugs which will affect your management.

Thank you again to the Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust for getting me over there and I would definitely recommend any other potential future rural students to sign up to the RMIP programme so they can also make the most of opportunities like this!