Medical students learn the ropes

Medical student Tumi Yusuf’s father is a doctor working in Warragul where she grew up. But it wasn’t a given that she’d follow in his footsteps.

“My dad was a doctor, so I thought that was pretty cool. But I got to the end of high school and started to rebel,” she said. “I thought, I don’t want to do what my dad does.”

In the end she decided medicine did provide useful skills.

She’s one of nine students who grew up in Gippsland who are among 94 first year students doing placements in Warragul and other hospitals across Gippsland during 2017.

The students, all studying the graduate entry medicine course, spend their first year based in Churchill and their reasons for studying medicine are as varied as their postcodes.

They are certainly discovering the personal side of medicine while on placement.

Warragul locals, Holly Rennie and Tumi Yusuf, are both based at Warragul hospital.

Running into people they know is common and, though they laugh about it, it’s a positive part of studying locally. “You just see everyone and I find it comforting,” said Tumi.

Stephanie Wall’s interest in medicine started when she found herself enjoying looking at the pictures in nursing textbooks as a kid.

Like Holly and Tumi, she’s fond of her home town, Warragul, and the community there.

“It’s really important to do what we can to keep that community together. I’d really like to be able to facilitate people staying in their community for help,” she said.

Holly also wants to stay rural. “There’s a need in rural areas that I could jump in and fill. That’s really attractive to me and giving back to the community as well. People wouldn’t have to travel all the way to Melbourne if I was a specialist there,” she said.

Once they complete this year the students may stay in Gippsland, be placed in other parts of regional Victoria or go to Melbourne to finish their medical course.

And while their path will take a couple more years to complete than if they’d stepped in straight from secondary school, they all agree that a first degree was excellent preparation for the medicine course and gives them something else to fall back on.