Long days driving headers during the summer wheat harvest have given UNE medical student Jared Lawrence plenty of time to reflect on the kind of doctor he would like to become.
The annual holiday work provides much-needed income, to sustain his Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine studies, but also valuable insights into the patients and communities he’s so eager to serve.
“I work closely with individual farmers – they take you in like one of their sons – and together you harvest from 7am to almost midnight for weeks on end,” he said. “It allows me to walk in their shoes, to understand how stressful their work can be. Having such insights will allow me to treat farmers and their families more holistically, because I understand their life outside their medical condition.
“While doing some contract ploughing in Gilgandra a couple of years ago, I saw first-hand the impact of poor mental health when a farmer died by suicide. Before that I didn’t fully understand how mental health affected an entire community. It was coming out of the 2020 drought and that man had a lot of agricultural and financial stresses, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he received the care he needed from a GP who fully understood his position. It’s something that has played on my mind ever since and I think about it whenever I have a farmer in front of me. I’m determined to develop my communications skills, so I can better understand how to get them to open up, to find out how they are really going.”
Realities of rural medicine
2022 was Jared’s fourth harvest in rural NSW and Victoria, cut a little short by record flooding rains. Earlier in the year, during a five-week placement with Associate Professor Dr Aniello Iannuzzi, a GP in Coonabarabran, he had been schooled in other realities of rural medical practice.
“It was there that I experienced the connection a doctor can develop with his/her patients and the positive impact a skilled local, permanent doctor can make to the health outcomes of a rural population,” Jared said. “That’s something I strive to have in my career. Limited resources and isolation from specialist medical care mean that rural GPs require a broad clinical skillset, because they may not have anyone else to rely on, but I believe this leads to a very rewarding career.”
Limited resources and isolation from specialist medical care mean that rural GPs require a broad clinical skillset, because they may not have anyone else to rely on, but I believe this leads to a very rewarding career.
First-hand experience
Jared’s passion for working in rural medicine goes back to the time, at age 16, when his own health demanded closer ties with his family GP.
“I was living on my family’s beef property near Singleton, NSW, when I suffered a knee injury playing rugby,” Jared said. “I had to go to Newcastle to have scans and surgery. Having Dr Davis Woods, someone who understood me and the demands of having to travel to Newcastle for treatment … his communication and support was great, and developing that relationship with him sparked my interest in going down the medicine path myself.”
But Jared’s journey has been a little unorthodox. After initially missing out on an offer to study at UNE, Jared enrolled in podiatry and completed two years of that degree at the University of Newcastle. His second application to UNE was also declined, but it was a case of third time lucky.
“I never thought I had the brains to do medicine, but I was interested in how the human body worked and Dr Woods broke study down into achievable goals; I never fully backed myself until he gave me that support,” Jared said. “Doing podiatry was the best thing for me; it allowed me to mature, to develop the study habits I would need, and to achieve the mark UNE required to enter the medicine program.”
Dr Woods broke study down into achievable goals; I never fully backed myself until he gave me that support.
Betty Fyffe Scholarship
An Elizabeth Cahill Fyffe Trust scholarship, in honour of former Tamworth nurse Betty Fyffe, helped to ease the financial pressure and supplement his harvest earnings during the first three years of Jared’s degree.
“It allowed me to knuckle down and study, without the distraction and stress of part-time work, so I could fully immerse myself in the medical program,” Jared said. “There are a lot of hidden costs in studying medicine, especially when you are working rural, and this support has also allowed me to be more engaged with my peers through the university’s extra-curricular events.”
Jared followed his older sister Teagan (who studied a Bachelor of Agriculture and Bachelor of Business) to St Albert's College. His younger sister Taylah (a current Bachelor of Agribusiness student) also lived at the college for a time.
In what is now UNE’s largest scholarship program, the Elizabeth Cahill Fyffe Trust fund helps 50 rural or regional students enrolled in our Joint Medical Program to follow their dreams each year and potentially bolster the future rural medical workforce.
Jared appreciates how important that end goal is.
End goal
“Growing up, studying and working in different rural locations has allowed me to develop a deep connection with these communities but also to appreciate the challenges they face,” Jared said. “Isolated from specialist doctors and services, like imaging equipment, patients often have to travel to access specialist care, and they don’t always get the care they need when they need it. Coonabarabran is only about 100 kilometres north of Dubbo, but even that can be a stretch for some people. The further west you go, the worse the doctor shortage gets, and these patients are the people supplying our fresh food.”
Growing up, studying and working in different rural locations has allowed me to develop a deep connection with these communities but also to appreciate the challenges they face.
Having permanent doctors in those centres, who understand their patients and social situations, can result in the provision of more achievable health management plans, according to Jared. But we need more doctors like that, dedicated to rural populations.
“Working long hours by yourself, with no-one to oversee you or bounce ideas off, carries its own risks to the practitioner,” Jared said. “In big tertiary hospitals you have the chance to debrief with social workers, to look after your own mental health. It’s pretty disappointing that we are a developed country and yet you’ve only got to travel two hours out of Sydney and you can struggle to find a full-time, permanent doctor that understands their community.”
It’s pretty disappointing that we are a developed country and yet you’ve only got to travel two hours out of Sydney and you can struggle to find a full-time, permanent doctor that understands their community.
These are the kinds of challenges Jared highlighted in an essay about his Coonabarabran experience, which earned him a Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Rural Medical Student Bursary Award last year.
He is now rotating through different specialties at Manning Base Hospital in Taree, where he is enjoying “interacting with patients and understanding their stories”. A two-year Rural Doctors Network cadetship is providing welcome financial relief and the promise of completing his internship at a rural teaching hospital. “I was always intending to intern at a rural hospital after graduation, so having this funding has made me even more excited for what’s to come,” Jared said.
“Thinking about becoming a GP is quite daunting, but my doctor mentors are fantastic and have been very reassuring. I am finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and how I’ll be able to give back to rural communities.”
