YOUNG doctor John Philpot arrived in Warrnambool in 1973, fresh medical degree in hand and thinking he would work in the south-west for a year or two.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He ended up spending his entire medical career in the city.
Warrnambool’s chief medical officer will hang up his stethoscope for the final time on December 31 after a career that spanned from rudimentary analogue techniques to the modern era of medical imaging.
The 65-year-old has been inundated with questions since he announced his retirement a few months ago.
“There’s two questions people have asked me over and over,” Dr Philpot laughs
“The first is — who will be my new doctor? And the second is — what will you do now that you’re retiring? As if I never do anything except spend my time at work!”
Originally from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Dr Philpot graduated from Monash University in December 1972 and a month later had relocated to Warrnambool with his wife Ronda.
“At first I planned to stay a year but we settled into our new town and my wife really wanted to stay,” he said.
“Warrnambool has always been well-serviced when it comes to medical facilities, even back in the mid-1970s.”
However, the tools of the medical trade have changed markedly since Dr Philpot was fresh out of university, meaning GPs now have greater resources at their fingertips.
“It’s easy to forget how primitive the average medical practice used to be,” he said.
“No CT scans, no MRI scans, testing was very basic. It was common for people to have their gall bladder removed or their appendix removed back then when today that wouldn’t be the case because the clinical technology has advanced so far.”
While technology has made life easier for the average GP, Dr Philpot said changing social standards have been a mixed bag. Cigarette smoking has markedly declined in south-west Victoria, but far more people are battling the bulge than they were a generation ago.
“The reduction in smoking was quite dramatic roughly 20 years ago when advertising was restricted and other measures were put into place,” Dr Philpot said.
“The rise in obesity cases has been far more incremental. It grew steadily over the years.
“If many overweight people attempted to lose just three kilograms, the benefits are plain to see.”
Worldwide events such as the AIDS scare in the mid-1980s, SARS in the early 2000s and more recently, the 2009 swine flu scare, are both memorably busy and sad occasions for Dr Philpot.
“I diagnosed two cases of AIDS at the time and they were both very tough (to deal with),” he said.
“One was a man who was married at the time and his wife was not aware that he had been diagnosed. She discovered and had to be tested, that was awful.
“Another incident occurred when I was covering immigration medicals.”
Another issue closer to home for Dr Philpot was Warrnambool’s fluoridation debate. He successfully advocated in favour of the additive to the water supply.
“The fluoridation issue took up a lot of my time as chief medical officer. The debate went on for some time,” he said.
“I remember attending a city council meeting and speaking about the benefits to overall dental health and some of the councillors were noticeably concerned about the political implications. Now it’s been in the water supply for a decade and the protests have stopped.”
When it came to politics, Dr Philpot was willing to put his viewpoint out into the public sphere, standing as an independent Wannon candidate at the 1993 federal election.
“One of the main issues I raised in 1993 was the abolition of state governments,” he said. “There’s so much unnecessary duplication — a federal health minister and a state health minister; a federal education minister and a state education minister.
“The problem is still with us to this day.”
One issue Dr Philpot has been involved in that has been largely solved is the region’s GP shortage.
“There was a time where the rural GP shortage was a hot topic of conversation,” he said.
“Fortunately for Warrnambool, that’s been largely resolved although it still is a problem for smaller towns the size of Terang or Camperdown.”
His successor as chief medical officer is yet to be decided but replacements have already been secured for his work at the Warrnambool Medical Clinic.
And the answer to all his patients questions about what he’ll do in his retirement?
“I have plenty of things on my to-do list,” Dr Philpot said.
“I work with Gideons, so we’ll continue the work of distributing Bibles to public buildings, hotels and so on.
“We’re also looking to downsize the house. I’ve been meaning to clear away the garden and then maybe after a year we’ll consider some travel.”