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 last semester has been a significant one as it was my last semester doing mostly theory work on campus. We’ve also been continuing with some placements to prepare for our clinical years. This semester I have a placement over 5 weeks where on Tuesdays I was at a private GP practice and on Fridays I was at the local Aboriginal Medical Service. It was just a coincidence that both placements fell at the same time, nobody else really had that. It ended up being so interesting though having them run on the same weeks because it was such a contrast to compare them both. The clients were different, the reasons they were presenting, the way the appointments were done. I found that I was much more comfortable and enjoying being at the Aboriginal Medical Service which does align with what I want to do in the future. It was really valuable to be able to have that experience and see in real life that I did enjoy the Aboriginal health aspect more than the private GP.

I found the academic aspect of the past semester the most challenging so far! We have had 2.5 years of the same teaching techniques but in the last half of third year they switch it so that teaching is student led, so we had student run seminars. It was a huge adjustment and I did find the exam the most difficult and it did reflect in my results but I passed! I kept thinking that I was going to fail because of how hard it was but this just reassured me that even when it gets really tough, I’m doing what I need to be doing and am passing

I’m really excited for the year ahead as I will be starting my first year of clinical placements in Broome Hospital. It’s far away from home but it is where my husband is from so we have family there, and I’ve heard it’s a really good teaching hospital plus there are only 10 students in total. I’ve been told that this year is the best year of medical school so I think I will have a really good year.