Inspired by a dedicated team
Year 5 MBBS student Naveen Tenneti recently completed a six-week placement with the Mallee District Aboriginal Service in Mildura and gained some new insights into rural health services.
As a medical student, you always enter your first day of a new placement with nervous anticipation.
There are two factors that will come to define your experience; the willingness of the ‘team’ to include you and the patients you are dealing with.
While the fact that no-one knew I was coming certainly did not allay my fears on the first day, my six-week placement at the Mallee District Aboriginal Service in Mildura has had a strong influence on my understanding of community and Indigenous health, and left me inspired to further my understanding of primary health care
MDAS, formerly known as the Mildura Aboriginal Corporation, is one of north-west Victoria’s major service providers for Indigenous people. Its 150 staff services a population of over 5000 people and provides them with a truly multi-disciplinary approach to health and well-being that takes into account cultural sensitivities and history. Along with their offices in Mildura, Swan Hill and Kerang, MDAS also runs the Warrakoo Rehabilitation Hostel which “provides support, counselling and lifeskills for Indigenous men, as an alternative to traditional incarceration”.
During my time at MDAS, I was exposed to the full variety of services provided but spent the majority of my time with the new practice GP, Dr Graham Gordon.
Despite having only recently emigrated from South Africa, Dr Gordon epitomises the classic Australian rural doctor. His ability to draw from each patient, a personal narrative that underpins their story of health and wellbeing is a testament to his years of experience and true care for his patients. After my rotation, many people asked me what my first experience of Indigenous health was like. I found it difficult to answer this question however because of Dr Gordon’s effortlessly amicable bed-side manner, which crossed cultural boundaries, he turned the practice of “Indigenous health” into simply “health”.
While the practice doctor is of incredible importance, his job is made next to impossible without a strong core of allied health staff including nursing, dieticians, diabetes educators, psychologists and Indigenous health workers as well as regular visits from specialist doctors. As much as I would like to name many of these wonderful people, I am likely to forget some names and would hate to not recognise the incredible job these people do.
MDAS takes great pains to go beyond the simple biological basis for disease, tapping into the underlying socio-economic-cultural and historical factors. The latter component was best demonstrated by the hard work of the ‘Bringing them home’ team across the state.
While I undoubtedly left MDAS inspired by the people who worked there, for the first time I was also exposed to the dark underbelly of the Australian health care paradox. In our first world country and our high-tech practices, Indigenous populations suffer from comparatively low life expectancies, high rates of mental, cardiac and endocrine disease, a staggering rate of youth suicides and much more. It was truly inspiring to see the resilience of both staff and patients in confronting these odds and I can only hope that they continue to man the front-line of health delivery in Australia.
Naveen Tenneti (Year 5)