I have worked in Indigenous health for three years and throughout this time have known that my career will be in this area. During this time, I have dedicated myself to making positive changes in Indigenous health. I volunteer as a member of a national youth health and wellbeing committee which is completely Indigenous youth led, as one of two WA representatives. I work for an Aboriginal health organisation promoting and implementing an Aboriginal youth health strategy with the aim to improve health outcomes for Indigenous young people. I have worked with Aboriginal Medical Services across the state and have met many inspiring Indigenous people working in health, including doctors and medical students. I have seen how having a doctor who is Indigenous working with community can have more positive outcomes. I also work with doctors who advocate and have the power to influence change. These are all people who I look up to, and I knew that being one of those doctors is something I would love to do, but I never thought that it was possible for me. As I met more Indigenous medical students and doctors, I realised that they all have similar stories to me and have come from a similar background and faced the same challenges that I do. These experiences led me to complete the Curtin Indigenous Pre-Medicine and Health Sciences enabling course in 2021 and successfully be accepted to study Medicine in 2022.

At the Aboriginal Health Council of WA, I have worked on a project that highlights the lack of access to services in rural and remote communities. Learning this and having the opportunity to travel across WA to these communities confirmed that I am interested in regional and remote Indigenous health. When I am a doctor, my intention is to work in this space. My goal is to make a positive impact to the health of Indigenous people. I will do this by working as a General Practitioner or Rural Generalist. I will ensure I work closely with the community consistently, and provide culturally secure care.

By working with the community and continuously learning from them, I will identify barriers that exist for people in accessing health services, and will do my best to break down those barriers. I will not work solely with a clinical mindset, but a holistic one, and will consider all aspects of health that are important to Indigenous people. After building my knowledge and experience working with communities, I will advocate for systemic change for Indigenous people and their communities that will truly work to close the gap. I will do through by combining my medical knowledge, my experiences from working with Indigenous communities and my passion for creating positive change for my people. I am committed to studying medicine to achieve my overall goals, to become a doctor and make a positive change in Indigenous health.

This year is my first year of two years clinical placement and I was fortunate enough to get a place on the Rural Clinical School program and am completing this year in Broome hospital. I am so pleased about this and grateful as my husband is Yawuru (Broome)/ yul Nyul (Beagle Bay) so we get to finally live on his country and be part of and establish ourselves his community which has been incredible so far because we would like to stay here for at least a few years. We have made sure to spend lots of time connecting to culture through attending language classes and spending lots of time out bush on country fishing and camping with family.

An exciting thing I have been part of this year is being chosen to be featured on an NITV/SBS documentary called Our Medicine for season 2. It is about Aboriginal people working in health and I am the first medical student to be featured. The crew have followed me on my placements at the Aboriginal health clinics and filmed my experiences. It was so fun and I’m glad to be able to represent our mob on national television and hopefully young mob will see my journey and see that it is possible for our people to do things like medical school and become doctors. Season 1 is already on SBS and season 2 which I am on comes out in 2026.

I am absolutely loving rural medicine! The opportunities I get here are things I would not get to do in the city, the best day so far was my first day in obstetrics where I got to help deliver a baby for a first time mum who was from a remote community and was alone away from family and country. This was such a special moment to be part of. I am also gaining a lot of experience in Aboriginal health, including doing placements at remote community clinics, which is the area that I’m interested in so I am grateful for the strong foundation I am building.

I will admit though it has been challenging in the way that I have had to get used to attending full time placement and balance study on top of that outside of placement hours whereas in previous years we were just on campus studying. Because I have moved to Broome with my husband I am not eligible to stay in student housing (only allowed to stay there on your own and I didn’t want to leave my husband) so we have found our own accommodation which we pay for with assistance from his work. I did originally try to keep working to help pay the bills but it is just too much to stay on top of placement, study and work so I have stopped working for the first time in 16 years! I am able to make this decision and do this without having a huge financial burden because of the scholarship I have been afforded. Thank you so much I am forever grateful that this scholarship allows me to focus on my studies so I can get through and become a doctor for our mob.