THREE junior doctors are getting a taste for emergency medicine and country life as part of a new program in the south-west.
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Veena Patheyar, Karishna Karki and Daniel McCubbery have joined the team in the emergency department at South West Healthcare through the Emergency Medicine Program to provide them with specialist training.
Centre for Rural Emergency Medicine associate director and South West Healthcare emergency department physician Tim Baker said the program was designed to help doctors establish roots in regional areas.
It provides training at the hospital’s on-site Deakin University clinical school and plenty of hands-on experience in emergency medicine.
“It means that we have enthusiastic young doctors-in-training working in the department right now and it means that we’re more likely to have well-trained doctors stay here in the future,” Dr Baker said.
“We want to build a workforce and you can’t do that without training junior doctors.”
Dr Baker said the hospital’s new additions were receiving vital hands-on training.
“There’s two separate training programs that we run. Veena is doing her emergency medicine specialist training, which is a seven-year program, and Daniel and Karishna are doing an emergency medicine certificate program which takes between six to 12 months,” he said.
“For both it’s on-the-job training so it involves working in the emergency department while being supervised by senior emergency medicine staff and it involves learning outside of work with lectures and tutorials.”
In addition, the emergency education and training program provides surrounding small hospitals such as Portland, Camperdown and Hamilton with visits, assistance and training from the emergency specialist doctors based in Warrnambool.
Funding has come courtesy of the federal government and member for Wannon Dan Tehan said it was designed to entice doctors to regional areas and encourage them to stay.
“That’s the fantastic thing about coming and talking to the doctors today is that it’s working. They want to stay in a regional and rural setting to work and live,” he said.
“We’ve got a program that is providing real benefits now and into the future, which is just fantastic.”
Dr Patheyar has already lived in Warrnambool for a few years and has fallen in love with the city and emergency medicine.
“I got really good training here and then decided to do emergency and started liking that even more,” she said.
“We really like living here and we have a little girl so family life is great here.”
