MOUNT Gambier general practitioner Dr Michelle McIntosh will be thrown into the spotlight on Sunday when she performs with the Australian Doctors Orchestra.
While the arrival of the national orchestra will be a major coup for the Blue Lake city, Dr McIntosh is also making waves in the region’s medical fraternity following her new appointment with Flinders Rural Health SA.
Dr McIntosh has been appointed clinical teaching director at the Flinders University Mount Gambier campus, which is tucked away behind Mount Gambier Hospital.
“I will be coordinating the interns and junior doctors,” Dr McIntosh said this week.
The tertiary clinical campus has been instrumental in helping to attract and retain doctors to the South East, including Mount Gambier.
Its primary role is helping to transition medical students to practising doctors.
Coming full circle, Dr McIntosh went through the clinical program as a trainee doctor and later a junior doctor within the regional hospital system.
“I was in Millicent since 2011 and then moved to Hawkins Medical Clinic in July last year,” she revealed.
Explaining the importance of the Mount Gambier-based campus, Dr McIntosh said the journey of a junior doctor was much different in a regional setting than in a major metropolitan health facility.
She said the clinical programs offered ongoing support and training for the interns and junior doctors.
Prof Lucie Walters – who has been an instrumental medical education leader at the campus – described Dr McIntosh’s new role as a “coming of age” for the medical program.
She said the rural campus had made significant inroads into boosting the region’s medical workforce,
“In 2002, we didn’t have any medical students training here – in 2007 we started the intern training program,” Prof Walters said.
“This is a real coming of age to think we have grown someone through that system and they are now contributing as a leader in medical education – it is very exciting.”
She said the program fostered “social capital” and had made a significant contribution in growing and retaining the region’s GP workforce.
Thanks to the education pathways developed, GPs can now undertake nine of their 11 years training journey in Mount Gambier.
“If you look at the GP practices in Mount Gambier, probably around 50pc of the new doctors in town over the past 10 years have been people who have come to the town originally to do work in the hospital that is now being led by Dr McIntosh,” Prof Walters said.
While the city no longer struggled with general practitioner shortages, she revealed there remained gaps for GPs with some specialties.
“We would love a couple more GP obstetricians and there will also be a need for doctors with a special interest in emergency medicine,” Prof Walters said.
“That’s our next job – to create doctors with special skills.”
Revealing she would like the campus’ training program to continue to expand, she said there was an opportunity to provide resources for more senior training positions.
“But this is a funding challenge – it is a real challenge in the health budget to find money for additional training positions,” she said.
Prof Walters said she was hoping the State Government would “come to the party”.
