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 have just finished my first year of clinical placement in Broome and I have loved it!

One of the highlights for the second half of the year is that I got to go on a remote clinic placement to Balgo, a very remote community in the East Kimberley about 800km north west of Alice Springs. I had to catch a small plane there which only runs on Fridays so I spent one week there from Friday to Friday. I thought I really understood rural and remote medicine but attending this placement taught me so much that I could only learn by being there. An example is that we had a patient who was pretty unwell and we had a couple ideas of what was happening but without testing we could not know for sure, and Balgo has extremely limited access to most testing options so we had to watch and wait and decide whether to RFDS the patient out of community, we had to make this call from an extremely basic blood test and observations. This made me really see the true impact of being a person living in a remote community with such a lack of access to services. After this experience I will better understand the context of my patients from remote a lot more which I hope leads me to giving them better care.

In Balgo I also found out that a family member of mine, one of my pops (my grandmothers first cousin) was involved with setting up the clinic by advocating to government to have an Aboriginal health service there. He also had kids with a local woman so I found I had family there too! This was so special for me and for my family who I met, knowing my pop had helped get the clinic set up and I was there learning to be a doctor.

Another highlight of this year was I was recently received an award from Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) – the Rising Strong Indigenous Medical Student Award. I went to Brisbane to attend the RACGP Awards night. The award category is for an Indigenous medical student who has an interest in pursing a career in General Practice and is dedicated to Aboriginal Health.

I am lucky enough to have secured a place in Broome to complete my final year of medicine next year along with 2 other students. I am so happy as I love learning here and get to be really involved with patients with great doctors for teachers who I have gotten to know over this year. I am extremely grateful and looking forward to completing my last year of study in Broome.