2022 will be the beginning of my post graduate education in medicine and y the start of 2026 I will be a fully qualified Doctor. Four years is a lot of time for experiences and opportunities to occur in, so, while I have ideas of where I would like to apply myself, I am still staying open to what the future may bring.

An area of significant interest to me right now though, is women’s health. As a young Minjungbal woman of Yugambeh-Bundjalung Jugun from a rural area, I have struggled to access medical expertise by doctors who are willing to investigate and uncover the causes of my ill health. As a woman, too often our worries are dismissed and too often is the main solution for any ailment to ‘just go on the pill’. Despite this I am privileged as I have the ability and time to pursue other avenues and health professionals to help me. As a doctor I want to provide personalised care that genuinely finds and treats the root cause of illness rather than just band-aid the symptoms. I believe that, regardless of who or where you are, you should be able to access high quality, culturally and physically safe medical care. It is this vision tat makes me so passionate about Indigenous women being able to access such care preceding throughout and subsequent to childbirth for both her and her baby.

Unfortunately Indigenous mothers and their babies continue to experience poorer health outcomes before and after birth, particularly if they live in rural and remote areas. The systemic change required to improve the statistics and personal experiences of our women is not easily come by. Systemic change is the result of many individuals working together and I intend to add my qualifications and voice as a young Minjungbal woman to organisations such as Birthing on Country to be an advocate fro this change. Birthing on Country requires so many people in different capacities; doctors, researchers, advocates, and Indigenous woman themselves, with people working in inter sectional roles. The aim is to facilitate the return of the birthing process to Indigenous communities enabling culturally appropriate care specific of the mother, her mob and community traditions. There is hard evidence that the fostering of traditional birthing alongside medical checks and guidance helps ‘close the gap’ in both mental and physical health statistics, allowing families to connect with and preserve their traditions.

I know that wherever I end up as a health professional it is here that I want to make a change. Here being in the individual lives of those around me, and here being in the building blocks for tomorrow.

As a 3rd Year Medical Student, we only do one unit per semester however the credits are equivalent to four ‘normal’ six credit units. This year, I began my Broome placement as part of Rural Clinical School and it has been amazing. I relocated to Broome at the start of the year, and have been staying in the RCS housing with other students and attending placements throughout Broome hospital and clinics.

I have completed placements in Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, General Surgery, Psychiatry, and GP. I have also done specialty placements in Dialysis centres, Orthopaedics, Opthalmology and  I do not think I can narrow down a favourite as I have had such fantastic moments in every rotation. In Paeds I got to sit with a family and talk about their baby’s journey through hospitals to finally being allowed home to his family’s country. In ObGyn, I supported a Mum through her labour when she had no family around her, and was asked to be her support person through her caesarean. This was a higher honour to me than participating in the surgical end as I had done multiple times before. In Gen Surg I got to assist for laprascopic surgeries, operating intrabdominal cameras and tools, and suturing up at the end. In Psychiatry I sat for several hours with patients, listening to their stories and yarning. In GP I functioned as a supervised doctor, working at the AMS and seeing my own patients under the guidance of senior GPs.

For all studying medicine can be hard work, it is truly such a rewarding experience to be a student doctor.

Next semester I am looking forward to learning and doing even more!

I actually have my remote clinic rotation next semester though which is probably what I am most excited for. I will be going to clinic in Bidgydanga, Beagle Bay and have an extended stay in Balgo. I am so excited to be involved in very remote healthcare, and to see more of the communities where some of our patients come from.

My personal goal this semester was to assist in the delivery of a baby, unfortunately I was not able to achieve this. I was involved in the antenatal care, helped throughout the labour process and stayed late nights/weekends but unfortunately the births either went to caesarean delivery or I was replaced by a student midwife. Due to a shared experience among student doctors that our ability to assist in births was inequitably shared between ourselves and student midwives, we have flagged it with the medical co-ordinators. We can’t fulfil the expectations they have set for us at this time and it is also disheartening to be kicked out after you’ve stayed a built a connection with someone over the preceding appointments, check ins and throughout the labour process.

As always, the balance of practical placements and studying acidaemia is a tricky one when you want to have a life outside of university. One good thing about living with other medical students though is that it encourages me to study and we will have evening sessions throughout the week where we all sit down together and work on our respective studies, collaborating on high yield or tricky questions. At the start of the year, I left some of the assignments a bit late to the deadline however, the second round of check ins that have just been, I was preparing the bulk of the patient cases well in advance to ensure I wasn’t pulling very late nights to try complete them.

I’ve also begun starting the new rotation with a physical mini-list of what practical and patient case objectives I need to achieve, so that I can flag it with my supervising clinicians early. This has made it much easier rather than scrolling through guidebooks to remember what specific tasks I need to achieve on that placement and overall.

It’s always hard to leave my family, and being that bit further away hits a bit harder, particularly with my little brother leaving to go back to the East Coast to pursue university. I have also been trying to keep up a long distance relationship which comes with its own challenges. I try my best to call regularly with everyone at home, and we have family dinners with all us med students most nights of the week. I’m very lucky to have a great group of people around me and we regularly do a lot of activities together as well as debrief the god and the bad moments of our days together.

I have officially handed over my AIDA representative role at the start of the year, as I did not want to reapply for the role without physically being on campus. Next year, I will likely reapply to fill the role again. I have become an informal rep for my cohort however, acting to communicate on our cohorts behalf when there has been issues with assignment deadline feasibility and issues on placement. As I’m on Rural Clinical School, it’s a bit harder to be engaged with campus university activities however up here I’ve been involved with hospital netball and rugby teams that have made it through to quarterfinals and semi-finals respectively.  I also achieved an Exemplary Notice for Professional Conduct that exceeds expectation. This stemmed from an interaction I had with a patient as she was labouring and putting aside my role as student and instead becoming a support person for her.

I am working with the ESCALATE project currently, collecting surveys and doing interviews with mob who have kids in hospital. The focus is seeing if they have felt heard when interacting with the staff and whether there are culturally safe and appropriate means for them to escalate care.  We are beginning data analysis in July while we continue getting surveys which is very exciting.

I am also preparing for my elective in Summer of 2025, hopefully completing a week at PCH in developmental orthopaedic paediatrics with my mentor and then 3 weeks in Papau New Guinea in Kundiawa Hospital with a doctor I met in Broome.

After I complete my studies (2025) which is scarily close now, I do the new dual internship year before I am registered. I am hoping to continue being involved in the ESCALATE research project and get my name on a paper so that I can improve my chances at being accepted into a specialty college and training.