A Tamworth-based GP with 25 years experience has been recognised at the conference of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine.
Dr Jenny May has been named Rural Doctor of the Year.
Dr May said she’ll use the recognition to continue to advocate for training medical students in country areas, which she said is a way to keep the young Doctors in rural areas as they move into post-graduate training and beyond.
Dr May is the Clinical Dean of the University of Newcastle’s Department of Rural Health, based in Tamworth, and is responsible for supporting the 32 students studying at the Rural Clinical School each year.
She said keeping Doctors in regional areas requires long-term planning.
“I’ve got an opportunity to succession plan and work on building the next generation, so I’m involved in training medical students and GP registrars, and supporting GPs to be the best that they can be,” she said.
“But it’s also about recognising that the rural context is something more than urban, and what we want to do is provide high quality care locally.”
Dr May is completing a PhD, studying the recruitment and retention issues affecting regional centres.
She said training in such locations is just part of the solution.
“It’s a multi-factorial thing about why people stay in regional centres, but it’s also about understanding there is a different scope of practice required, particularly of specialists that stay in our regional centres,” she said.
“So it’s about understanding that, and then making pathways and making it easier for people to come to regional centres and provide that high quality of care.”
Dr Jenny May said in the past decade, the capacity of rural areas to provide adequate training for young Doctors has improved greatly.
“If you’re busy providing a service all day, then it’s very difficult to teach and train as well, so we need a critical mass of highly qualified people to do that, and we’re growing that,” she said.
“There’s been a huge difference in the last 10 years in the capacity for us to train and then retain the sort of people that we want.”