Tasting life as a country doctor
17 January 2009
Hamilton Base Hospital is the workplace for four intern doctors for the next 11 weeks. Doctors Matthew Blair, Andrew Lin, Alex Bryson and Andrew Cheng have recently graduated and are keen to experience life as ward doctors and persue their ambitions to become specialists.
Dr Blair, who is based at St Vincent's in Melbourne, thought Hamilton was a nice place to work part of his internship. "I'm very happy to be in Hamilton to start the rest of my medical career," he said.
Dr Bryson also from St Vincent's said he was pleased with how friendly the staff were. "The staff are very friendly, the nurses are helpful and so is the pharmacist," he said.
Dr Cheng from Barwon Health said he was enjoying his time at the hospital because he was able to experience a variety of situations and challenges. "In the country there is more variety, everything is sub-specialised in the city and I have found that general practitioners in the country have to attain a large knowledge base," he said.
St Vincent's Dr Lin said the hospital's facilities were superb. "The hospital looks very new and it has excellent facilities," he said.
The interns will become part of the 62 specialist medical, general practitioner and hospital medical officer staff who are currently employed to provide services to patients at Western District Health Service across Hamilton Base Hospital, Coleraine and Penshurst.
WDHS Chief Executive Jim Fletcher said the majority of the specialist and general practitioners provided services on a part-time basis and had their own private consulting practices, such as Hamilton Medical Group and Glenelg Surgical.
He said that in comparison to most regional and rural communities, Hamilton district was well off for medical staff, although they were currently seeking a Director of Medical Services and a physician with the help of a specialist recruitment agency.
"For specialist appointments this is our usual recruitment method as it generally includes seeking National and overseas candidates," Mr Fletcher said.
Also the Hamilton Medical Group and Coleraine, and Penshurst medical practices were each seeking an additional general practitioner he said.
Above: Western District Health Service chief executive Jim Fletcher welcomes new interns Alex Bryson, Andrew Lin, Matthew Blair and Andrew Cheng to the team at the Hamilton Base Hospital.