This Friday, thirty-six students based at The University of Queensland Rural Clinical School (UQRCS), Toowoomba Regional Clinical Unit will swap their scrubs for mortar boards and gowns as they graduate with a Doctor of Medicine (MD).
Graduating students Joel Bloomfield and Kurt Heckenberg are both staying on to commence their internships at Toowoomba Base Hospital in 2023.
Joel has spent the last two years studying in Toowoomba and is aiming to work in anaesthetics or emergency, with his long-term goal to end up as part of a helicopter retrieval team.
"The RCS has a day where you go to the life flight base for a tour and to be actors in a mass casualty event,” Joel said.
“These events allowed me to see the sort of work they do and put me in touch with the people working there. Joel said studying in Toowoomba he has found the clinicians have more time for students and you become a known member of the community.
"There are so many extra opportunities to learn, even beyond the extra simulations that the RCS staff put together, and there are so many social events where you’ll know people there,” he said.
For Kurt, living and working in a regional/rural/remote area is what he sees himself doing.
"I don’t have any strong preference to where exactly as yet and I’m happy to see where my life and training takes me, but I will try to avoid the city as much as possible,” Kurt said.
"My career aspirations are to make a positive and enduring contribution to my local community while trying to find that elusive ‘work-life balance’ that I keep hearing about," he said.
Director of UQRCS, Associate Professor Riitta Partanen said that the common themes among RCS students is that spending time living and studying in a regional area has given them a deep appreciation of the challenges in regional medicine and even inspired many to pursue careers in regional, rural and remote locations.
“This year marked 20 years of the UQRCS, and we celebrate our 1,638 graduates who have studied with us for at least one year, over the past 20 years, in one of our four locations of Toowoomba, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg and Rockhampton,” Associate Professor Partanen said.
“Congratulations to our graduating students; you should be incredibly proud of your efforts, and we know that collectively you will go on to impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
“We are immensely proud to be part of the start of your journey into medicine,” she said.
For further information on studying medicine in the Darling Downs, please visit rcs.medicine.uq.edu.au or follow us on Facebook.
