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.

I am halfway through my final year of medicine and have been completing my placement in Broome and the Kimberleys as I did last year and as expected, I am loving it.

Before the year started though I had the opportunity to do my elective placement internationally in Ireland at Cavan Hospital for 4 weeks with 3 other students from Western Australia. It was a stark difference coming from the Kimberley, and I was told we were in very rural Ireland and in the middle of nowhere. It was interesting to compare this to the very rural and remote places I have worked in, especially considering Cavan Hospital is about 1.5-hour drive from Dublin! They also said their hospital was small but it was much bigger than what I am used to. Broome Hospital has around 60 beds and Cavan Hospital has over 200 plus lots of specialist doctors that we don’t get to see in Broome. I loved Ireland and getting to know the people who were so welcoming and the patients and how their experiences were both similar and different to the patients I see in the Kimberley. We got lots of chances to explore Ireland and travel too which was an experience I will never forget.

Back home though this year a huge chunk of my time has been spent on remote placements. I feel so lucky to have worked all over the Kimberley now and see so many different ways health services are provided. I have worked in the Fitzroy Valley on ENT visiting specialist clinics in Fitzroy Crossing town and remote communities of Muludja, Noonkanbah and Looma where I stayed on a working cattle station for the week. I have worked on geriatrics, ED and general medicine in Derby. I have also done a remote GP placements in the Kutjungka region with communities Balgo, Billiluna and Mulan. I still have a trip coming up which will be my remote GP placement up to the Dampier Peninsula communities of Beagle Bay, Lombadina and One Arm Point. I’m not sure if any other final year students gets such a variety of experiences that I have received here in Broome.

Later in the year I am looking forward to hopefully attending the Pacific Region Indigenous Doctors Congress in Taiwaiin which is a gathering of Indigenous doctors and medical students to share knowledge and make connections.

Final exams are only months away which is both scary and exciting. For next year, I was offered a place to complete my internship here in Broome and I am so excited to continue my journey here and giving myself a strong foundation in Aboriginal health and working here in my first year being a doctor.

As always I am forever grateful to the donors of Australian Rotary Health Scholarship which has supported me for my whole journey and made it possible for me to have better access to all these incredible opportunities I am experiencing. Thankyou from the bottom of my heart.