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Finding home in the Far North

As a new graduate Dr Ayesha Sheikh found it was easy to become a little overwhelmed in the hospital system, regularly changing teams, working long hours and juggling a personal life. Having already spent time in far north Queensland as a medical student, she decided a move north to train as a GP through JCU in Innisfail might be exactly what she needed. “The main thing for me was how supportive, approachable and down to earth all my supervisors here were. I’d been doing long ho...

Psychiatry training in north Queensland

As a junior doctor, Daniel Gileppa was fascinated by the brain. A rotation in neurology confirmed his passion, but the more he learned about how brain dysfunction affects behaviour, the more he realised his true calling lay elsewhere. “I was very interested in disorders of the brain. I was very interested in the odd behaviours and thoughts that came from those disorders, and I realised that’s really more psychiatry.” A psychiatry rotation followed, and he realised h...

Making an impact in emergency medicine

As an Emergency Medicine registrar at The Townsville University Hospital, Dr Julia De Boos noticed a lot of her patients were coming in from Mount Isa. Despite being attached to her tropical lifestyle, once she became an Emergency Medicine Physician, she found herself heading west for two shifts at the Mount Isa Emergency Department, one of the most remote in the country. Two and a half years later, she still hasn’t left. “We have the coolest patients in the Australia, they&rsq...

Fixing fractures in the far north

Carrying out an unscheduled amputation isn’t what most fifteen year olds expect to do on a day out, but for Brady Bonner amputating a fellow riders toes after an accident on a trail ride would kick start a passion for orthopaedics. “My father was the doctor for the ride and we were pretty far away from any healthcare facility and one of the riders crushed his foot against a rock. At the end of the ride he took his boot off and three of his toes were hanging on by a thread. “My ...

Exploring infectious diseases in the Far North

Far North Queensland may be a long way from home for Glaswegian, Dr Simon Smith, but for the infectious diseases specialist at the Cairns Hospital, there’s no place he’d rather be. “I came to Australia ten years ago, initially to the Sunshine Coast, but I really wanted to experience tropical medicine in a more remote location. I particularly wanted to look after people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, so I came to Cairns as a registrar.”...