Working at Atherton Hospital

Transcript from ‘Hear from our medical staff at Atherton Hospital’

[Background music plays while drone footage of Atherton Hospital and the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service logo is shown]

>> Dr Elizabeth Hawkins, Director of Medical Services: Welcome to Atherton Hospital, situated at the southern end of the Atherton Tablelands, about an hour and a half from Cairns. My own journey in Atherton started almost 30 years ago when I came to the hospital for six months to finish my rural training and never quite left.

As you'll see, our country hospital is growing up with recent upgrade in infrastructure to provide new ward areas, ED, theatre and medical imaging. But what's most important is what goes on the inside.

Atherton is a great place to live and work. Here's what some of our doctors have to say.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: I came to Atherton Hospital as a job after being in the Army for over 20 years. I've been here now for two years. My family decided that we needed to come and live on the Tablelands.

>> Dr Daniel Crow, Senior Medical Officer: I actually sought out Atherton Hospital fairly early on in my career. I had visited here for a holiday and just fell in love with the location. So as soon as I got into medicine, one of the first things I looked at is what sort of hospital is in Atherton and how can I get there?

>> Dr Sam Bartsch, Principal House Officer: I guess being born and bred in Townsville and then doing my university study at JCU, I've always loved the region up here and feel connected to up here. When choosing a hospital, where to train, I'd heard of the great culture at Atherton Hospital.

>> Dr Angela Barrie, Senior Medical Officer: I met one of the other doctors that was working here at a registrar training workshop that I had, and she was telling me all about how good it was at Atherton Hospital.

>> Dr Renee Guli, Senior Medical Officer: I heard that the culture here was an amazing one, so it was an easy decision to come and work in Atherton.

>> Dr Erin Jeffrey, Provisional Fellow: I grew up on the Tablelands, so this is sort of home for me. It's my first year back in quite a few years, and Atherton had always been a dream. It's got a really good reputation for rural generalism. I have made my way back home essentially.

>> Dr Nick Cairns, Senior Medical Officer: The beauty of working here as a PHO, no week looks the same. So, some weeks I'm here in the emergency department where I'm supervised by the rural generalist. Other weeks I'm up on either the medical or the surgical ward. Other weeks I'm in theatres, so that's what I love about working here.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: I'm employed as a GP anaesthetist and my scope covers off emergency medicine and acute care. So pretty much the only thing that I don't do is deliver babies on purpose.

>> Dr Renee Guli, Senior Medical Officer: So, my job in Atherton is as an obstetric SMO. It can be anything from working on the wards, which I'm doing this week, to down in the emergency department, and then sometimes I get to work in the maternity unit as well.

>> Dr Nick Cairns, Senior Medical Officer: Atherton Hospital, it's a great place to work. We're fortunate enough to have just moved into a new facility. So, what that means is that we can provide really high-quality care in these rural settings.

>> Dr Daniel Crow, Senior Medical Officer: I really love the type of work I get to do here. Probably more so I just love the people that I work with.

>> Dr Casey Baxter, Senior Medical Officer: The main thing that I love about Atherton is the team, it's a real kind of happy vibe, everyone pulls together.

>> Dr Renee Guli, Senior Medical Officer: It's basically like coming to work with our family.

>> Dr Erin Jeffrey, Provisional Fellow: I really am just enjoying this team of, of wonderful, supportive colleagues.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: The sense of humour and the personalities that you get to work with in this place every day are pretty awesome. There's people who've come from all around the world to be here. I thought it was a bit kitsch and probably just marketing, but it's pretty close to true, it's paradise around the place.

>> Dr Nick Cairns, Senior Medical Officer: The opportunities for teaching and learning here at Atherton Hospital are sort of fantastic.

>> Dr Renee Guli, Senior Medical Officer: I run the education roster, so every Wednesday we have a different teaching topic, led by a different SMO or specialist.

>> Dr Casey Baxter, Senior Medical Officer: There's GP education on a Thursday morning, we can dial into different things from Cairns, and certainly the Cairns Emergency guys come up and sometimes put on some special days for us et cetera.

>> Dr Angela Barrie, Senior Medical Officer: We get a variety of interns and med students coming over from Cairns so we can be a part of teaching all of them and, you know, showing them how good it is to work in rural life.

>> Dr Daniel Crow, Senior Medical Officer: When I came to Atherton, I was a registrar, so still in my training, and now I have the opportunity to pass that on to the junior doctors.

>> Dr Sam Bartsch, Principal House Officer: The main learning that I receive is through on-the-job, hands-on experience, which I believe is the best way to learn.

>> Dr Renee Guli, Senior Medical Officer: Living in Atherton is beautiful.

>> Dr Sam Bartsch, Principal House Officer: There's reason that the Atherton Tablelands is such a popular tourist destination. There's so much to do here.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: Life around the Tablelands is rich for culture, for food, for good outdoor activities.

>> Dr Sam Bartsch, Principal House Officer: I live five minutes from Lake Tinaroo, so we spend our time water skiing or wakeboarding on the lake.

>> Dr Daniel Crow, Senior Medical Officer They've got the reef not too far away, the Daintree, we've got stunning waterfalls.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: If we need it, we're not that far from the international airport at Cairns, so we can be anywhere in Australia or the Pacific in a couple of hops and it's very convenient.

>> Dr Nick Cairns, Senior Medical Officer: When we moved down, we bought a small farm. We've got 14 acres down on the dam. I've got my three children sort of growing up in sort of a really a lovely environment.

>> Dr Lloyd Malone, Senior Medical Officer: It takes me only 12 minutes to get here from home to be at work. I can be on call at home. I don't have a long commute. If there's lots of traffic, it might take me 14 minutes. It's a very comfortable and convenient lifestyle.

>> Dr Erin Jeffrey, Provisional Fellow: It's great. Living here is fantastic. Swimming is probably one of my favourite things to do, and there's just endless opportunities here. It's such a wonderful place to live.

>> Dr Elizabeth Hawkins, Director of Medical Services: Living, and working in Atherton has so much to offer. The opportunity to work to your full scope of practice while providing care to people in your own community, as well as the opportunity to live in an amazing tropical setting.

If the idea of working in Atherton interests you, please contact us here.

[Music ends with vision panning out and above from the Hospital]

[Text on screen] Scan here to view the CHHHS Careers page for further information with QR code and Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service logo on screen.

End of transcript