Dr Jessica Paynter worked tirelessly as a junior doctor in a regional hospital during the Victorian floods 18-months ago. or signup to continue reading She's not complaining. It was highly rewarding work and the community was incredibly grateful.
But it exposed her to the realities of rural medicine. "It was exhausting," she told ACM. "You feel a lot more isolated, there is skeletal staff," she said.
Infrastructure was disrupted and . The disruption to the surgical team resulted in less access to surgical care. Dr Paynter is now based at Monash Rural Health in Bendigo.
But it was that early experience in her medical career that sparked her latest research looking at the experience of general surgeons in rural Australia. Published in the , her research found numerous barriers to surgeons working in rural Australia. Only 20% of general surgeons are working in rural areas despite 29% of Australia's population living outside of major metropolitan centres, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Dr Paynter's research - which involved interviewing 22 surgeons across the country - found most small rural hospitals don't have a surgeon. Instead, they are staffed by visiting surgeons. While visiting surgeons offered a vital service they also at times left complications for local surgeons to manage when they left and generated increased costs due to locum rates.
Some interviewed questioned whether they were offering enough teaching locally to surgeons in training to.