Where the journey can lead

Registrars are on a journey to a career in General Practice. Our greatest accomplishment is being able to travel with them, side by side, providing the support they need and the training experiences that will help them discover their niche in primary care.

Connection

A career in General Practice wasn’t Dr Kat Abeykoon’s first choice when she finished her medical degree seven years ago.

“General Practice? No way, I was all about Anaesthetics,” Kat says. “I even did a Masters in Critical Care.”

However, while undertaking her critical care year Kat quickly realised what she really loved about medicine wasn’t available to her in that realm.

“The patients were mostly asleep and intubated!,” she says.

“I found I was having a lot of one-sided conversations, and the only response I got was the steady beeps coming from the anaesthetic machine and monitors.”

All lightness aside, some deep reflecting on her time as a hospital doctor revealed to Kat the reason she’d studied medicine in the first place.

“When I thought about it the experiences that stood out for me were the few precious, time-stopping moments when I was able to be there for a patient,” she says.

“Holding a dying man’s hand as he took his last breaths in ICU; the wife of a patient who hugged me in the middle of the corridor, thanking me for listening and advocating for her husband who had just been diagnosed with lymphoma; a teary-eyed mother of a 29 year-old woman who had moments ago passed away from terminal cancer thanking me for taking care of her daughter.”

“Where in medicine could I find my love of connecting with patients and feel like I’d truly made a tangible difference in their lives?”

In 2018 Kat applied for the AGPT Program General Pathway through GPTQ.

Now in her third year of training she is doing the work she feels she is meant to do, treating a broad range of patients at Ipswich’s Bremer Medical Centre, a not-for-profit community health clinic operated by the University of Queensland.

“I’m exactly where I want to be,” she says. “

GPTQ treats trainees as individuals, helping us to carve out the career that’s right for us and along the way really caring about our personal needs and circumstances,” Kat says.

Collaboration

New Fellow Dr Rhys Cameron’s final year as a Registrar solidified his interest in pursuing an Indigenous Health focus during his General Practice career.

“My placement at ATSICHS (Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service) in South Brisbane gave me such a great working experience,” Rhys explains.

“The Service has a really strong team environment that I enjoy. You work in close collaboration with the nurses, allied health and Aboriginal Health workers and it is special to be a part of that team dynamic.” 

Rhys went on to secure a permanent position at ATSICHS after completing his training and now works there full-time.

He describes his AGPT General Pathway training experience as “very supportive” and says the exam preparation activities and face-to-face seminars made a big difference to his results.

“The style of teaching modelled by GPTQ’s Medical Educators inspired me too,” Rhys says.

“GPTQ gave me the opportunity to pursue my interest in medical education and I became a Registrar Medical Educator and got to promote General Practice to junior doctors in hospitals, which I found very fulfilling.” 

Impact

She works across two roles intrinsic to the delivery of refugee health services in Brisbane and life is very, very busy, but Dr Rebecca Farley couldn’t be happier with her career in General Practice.

Rebecca became a Fellow in 2011 after undertaking her AGPT Program General Pathway training with GPTQ.

Through an academic research post GPTQ helped to facilitate during her training she gained experience in the field of refugee healthcare and it has become her passion.

“The post introduced me to some wonderful GPs who really mentored me and enabled me to develop my interest in this area and better understand how refugee healthcare is delivered in Australia,” Rebecca explains.

“I was particularly inspired by the work being done at a General Practice in Inala. It was there that I really found my place in General Practice,” she says.

“The challenges refugees and asylum seekers face being in a new country can be great. It is essential they have access to the comprehensive care that GPs can provide and coordinate.”

Rebecca says her work regularly reminds her of the power of human connection.

“I can sit with someone who grew up in a village in a small country in Africa and our life experiences are so different, yet somehow we can find common ground. The joy of discovering that common humanity is one of the greatest privileges of my work.”

Rebecca is now Clinical Lead in Refugee Health for both the Brisbane North Primary Health Network and the Mater Refugee Health Service.

A key aspect of her work is to make connections with GPs throughout Brisbane and support them in caring for refugee patients.

This, along with a third role as Deputy Director of Clinical Training at Princess Alexandra Hospital, satisfies an affinity with teaching Rebecca says came from her GPTQ training experience.

“I was introduced to wonderful educators through the academic post,” she says.

“This coupled with the way the Medical Educators and staff at GPTQ listened to my interests and supported me to pursue my passions, however tricky that may have been, has stayed with me.”

Variety

Dr Annabelle Hughes knew early into her medical studies that a career in specialist medicine wasn’t going to be for her.

“I enjoyed every new area of study we covered, so it became clear pretty quickly that choosing a singular pathway wouldn’t hold my interest,” Annabelle says.

Instead she began investigating career options that would give her the variety she hungered for.

Some volunteer work in rural medicine in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands during her studies was the catalyst for exploring the notion of rural General Practice with GPTQ.

She soon settled on pursuing the AGPT Program’s Rural Pathway and is now on her way to becoming a rural generalist with an advanced specialist skill.

Currently in her first year of core generalist training, Annabelle is a Senior House Officer at Toowoomba Hospital and enjoying rotations in Cardiology, ENT and Anaesthetics.

“This feels like the right fit for me,” Annabelle says.

“Working in different setttings and seeing a broad cross-section of patients is challenging and rewarding and I love it.”

She says GPTQ is with her every step of the way.

“The mentors and staff at GPTQ have been really helpful while I have been trying to organise my General Practice placements and they’ve put me in contact with Registrars who are in practices I am interested in so I can talk to them about their experiences,” Annabelle says.

“I’m excited about the career I have ahead of me.”

Community

Putting down roots and establishing herself as a rural generalist in the town of Dalby has ticked some important boxes for Dr Tammy Maxwell.

“I can’t think of anywhere better to live and practice medicine,” she says.

After completing her AGPT Rural Pathway training in the thriving rural hub four years ago Tammy and her husband Ryan decided they’d fallen in love with the outback setting and close-knit local community and wanted to stay on permanently.

The couple now live on a 10 acre property with their two young children and Tammy divides her working week between her GP rooms in town and the local hospital.

She says maternity care is a much loved aspect of her case load.

“Dalby is one of the biggest maternity sites in Queensland and for me obstetrics offers a great mixture of surgery and medicine,” Tammy explains.

“I love the continuity of care you get to provide in a rural generalist setting — being able to care for a woman through the full journey of her pregnancy, then often being a part of that baby’s care through childhood.”

Tammy says GPTQ was instrumental in her journey to rural General Practice.

“GPTQ really supported me in navigating my training requirements to achieve ACRRM Fellowship and their face-to-face Registrar teaching days built my confidence in office-based General Practice,” she says.

“Working as a rural GP over the past seven years has been a challenging yet extremely rewarding experience, and my early Registrar years were made easier by GPTQ who helped me navigate the training pathway.”

Holistic

The community medicine Dr Sean Mitchell provides each day to his patients at Kalwun Aboriginal Medical Service on the Gold Coast is a world away from the acute care he was delivering in hospital emergency departments just two years ago, but he wouldn’t have things any other way.

Sean was establishing a strong emergency career when he decided to make the transition to General Practice.

It was a decision driven, he says, by the powerful GP training experience he’d had as a junior doctor.

“I was among the last intake of junior doctors for the Prevocational General Practice Placement Program (PGPPP) before the Federal Government ceased its funding back in 2014,” Sean explains.

“I spent three months in Katherine working at Wurliwurlinjang, a rural Aboriginal Medical Service and it was one of the most exciting things I’d ever been a part of,” he says.

“I was then lucky enough to do a second, three month PGPPP term in Angaston, South Australia where we also ran the small hospital.”

When the program finished Sean returned to his hospital training and stints in paediatrics and emergency medicine took him to hospitals around the country, but his General Practice experiences stayed with him.

“With the PGPPP no longer around most junior doctors miss out on being exposed to primary care, let alone in rural and Indigenous communities,” he says.

“I was lucky enough to have the experience and I never forgot it. Doing the job is completely different to watching someone else do the job and that’s the usual medical student experience.”

Helping him to facilitate a successful transition to General Practice is where Sean says GPTQ came to the fore.

“If you have worked specifically in one area of medicine it’s easy to develop a fairly narrowed mindset,” he says.

“GPTQ’s communication courses were invaluable for me. They helped me learn how to communicate effectively with patients and how to utilise time-management techniques to make the most of every consultation.”

“I now treat a broad urban patient base — both Indigenous and non-Indigenous families, women needing pregnancy and antenatal care, people from low socio-economic backgrounds and some from affluent backgrounds, local footballers, young people from remote communities moving here for education or job opportunities, you name it. I love my job!”