CHAMPIONS JOIN THE RANKS OF CAIRNS HOSPITAL INTERNS
AN OLYMPIC rower and a national rural health award winner are among the 50 medical interns who will be starting at Cairns Hospital soon.
Rockhampton’s Alexander “Sasha” Belonogoff represented Australia in rowing at the 2016 Rio Olympics where he brought home a silver medal.
He said “Daintree for a day trip” was the reason he was attracted to FNQ.
“My first career was as an elite athlete but medicine was always the goal,” Dr Belonogoff said.
He started the medical program at James Cook University at 17 and two months in, after making it to the rowing nationals team, decided to take a gap year which ended up extending to nine years.
“I finished rowing in 2016 and came back to JCU in 2017, picked up in first year again and did the full six years in Townsville,” Dr Belonogoff said.
General practice, emergency and obstetrics and gynaecology are areas of interest to Dr Belonogoff, who intends to become a bush doctor one day.
“In a small community, you can have a large impact,” he said.
“I’m from a small community myself — Moura originally — before moving to Rocky and I saw the impact that the local GP had on the community.”
For Sunshine Coast “country girl” Jasraaj Singh, it was a mix of the tropical lifestyle and the regional and
remote healthcare opportunities available in the Far North that saw her choose Cairns as training ground.
Dr Singh, who was part of the Extended Rural Cohort at the University of Melbourne, was
recognised for her contribution to rural and remote medicine in 2022 when she was awarded the Rural Doctor Association of Australia’s Medical Student of the Year Award at a ceremony in the Parliament
House in Canberra.
“That award was a surprise. It was great to be nominated by colleagues and to be recognised for a genuine passion of mine,” Dr Singh said.
It was a high school program in
Nambour Hospital, where students went to the paediatrics ward every week, that ignited Dr Singh’s initial spark to pursue a career in medicine.
Having worked in remote communities in Kenya and with Aboriginal communities in East Arnhem Land and Tennant Creek, Dr Singh said each community offered different healthcare challenges but she was always drawn to the noticeable sense of togetherness “where everyone knows everyone”.
It’s why she is keen on becoming a rural generalist who is part of the community.
Dr Lachlan Gordon, acting director of medical services at Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service, said they were
excited to welcome the new cohort.
“They (junior doctors) get a whole variety of unique experiences, rotations in the rural hospitals, and most notably, one with Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS),” he said.
“We have rotations up to Mareeba, Atherton and a GP rotation down to Babinda as well. RFDS also flies doctors to a variety of rural communities up in Torres and Cape Health service as well.”
Interns will be rotating every 10 weeks covering general medicine, surgery, emergency medicine and additional elective terms.
“Roughly fifty per cent of the 50 are local graduates from James Cook University,” Dr Gordon said.
“Majority of our interns stay on to perform resident medical officer jobs or junior house officer jobs in the health service.”