The Northern Victoria Regional Medical Education Network (NVRMEN) is a collaborative partnership between the rural clinical schools of Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

Established in 2006 to address the need for more doctors in rural areas, it provides extended clinical training in rural Victoria to 60 students each year, 30 from each university. This group is known as the Extended Rural Cohort.

Bendigo hosts students from both universities for their first clinical training year, and this year’s group included Sibon Fuzzard.

Sibon has lived in Bendigo most of her life and chose to study at the University of Melbourne but spent time at the Monash Bendigo Regional Clinical School, along with other University of Melbourne students. The next stage of Sibon’s studies is a trip to Africa. This is part one of Sibon’s story.

Medical school can seem like a series of obligations – exams, study, lectures, and ward rounds.

It can seem like hard work with little reward, a road that winds on and on with no apparent end in sight!

I am thankful that all of these worries are melting away with the rapid approach of graduation and internship. I now see the study as a pleasure, expanding my knowledge and opening my eyes to solutions for healthcare problems.

The exams are done and dusted; with the power of hindsight they didn’t even seem that bad. Those niggling doubts that the rewards of my labour were minimal have vanished.

I am about to become a doctor; and before I do, I have the life changing opportunity to travel to Africa for my elective placement.

It is difficult not to have preconceived ideas about a place. In my mind Africa will be abundant with wildlife and Mufasa’s roar will no doubt still echo through the pride lands.

I am sure that the people of Africa will be happy. Despite the challenges they no doubt face in terms of access to what we consider necessities, I am sure I will find many wide smiles.

Going to Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town will be a much more first world hospital than working in a clinic in the middle of Soweto, but I am still bracing myself for the things that I will see.

In Australia I have only ever seen one HIV positive patient throughout my six years of training. In South Africa one in 20 people is HIV positive.

I am working in the Neonatology ward so I will no doubt not only see the impact of HIV in an adult population but also the horrific impact that it can have on babies just brought into this world.

I am sure that infectious diseases will be more common and that issues that we resolve with methodical antenatal screening will make appearances on a daily basis. I hope that my time away will not only provide the opportunity to see first-hand things normally reserved for textbooks in Australia, but a chance for me to truly appreciate how lucky we are.

I have always been a strong believer that with great privilege comes great responsibility. To have people entrust their secrets and their lives to you is the greatest privilege of all.

Being a doctor is something I have always wanted. It is something that I have always seen as a great honour. I hope to one day give back to my community in Australia and hopefully this experience in Africa will also give me a chance to contribute to the world.
– By Sibon Fuzzard

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 6th, 2013 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Bendigo RCS, Mildura RCS, Public. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.