THIRTY years on from the inception of RDAQ, current president Neil Beaton is reflecting on the strides the organisation has made in supporting rural and remote health professionals.
The Atherton based rural general practitioner in anaesthetics has a passion for rural medicine having grown up in a medical family in his hometown of Yorkshire in the United Kingdom.
He met his wife Clare, who is now also a general practitioner in obstetrics, while studying at Newcastle Upon Time in 1980, and the duo set off for a working adventure in Australia.
Arriving in Portland, Victoria in 1984 the couple worked before setting off on a motorcycle trip around Australia, covering 25,000 km. Their travels landed them a job in Katherine, NT, where they remained for 18 months and were particularly involved with indigenous health programs.
With a spirit of adventure still firm in their hearts, the couple worked in Vanuatu and then New Zealand before heading home to get married in 1988.
But Australia was where they knew they belonged and they returned to Portland in 1989 for a stint, before moving to Cairns where they raised four children and have remained ever since.
Dr Beaton said he enjoyed the challenges of working in rural health and said the profession had come a long way in the last 30 years.
"In Australia you can practice the full range of skills, particularly in Queensland, where you also work in country hospitals.
"Rural health is always a challenge, aboriginal health is a challenge."
Dr Beaton has worked closely on aboriginal health programs in Katherine and then Mareeba and Atherton, where he moved as medical superintendent in 1995. He pioneered the anesthetists training in Cairns for rural doctors, then became the executive director of medical services for the Cairns district before returning to clinical practice at Atherton and Mareeba.
Dr Beaton said it was getting easier to attract young people to the profession and retain them in the bush, due in part to the selection criteria of universities such s the medical school at JCU.
"They choose people from the bush and focus a lot of work on essential primary health care for indigenous people and other disadvantaged people in the North, so there is that real social justice agenda.
"Selecting people from the north and the bush we find there is a much higher retention rate as they are more comfortable going back into the country."
Despite the improvements, Dr Beaton said there was still work to be done to provide equitable health care in the bush.
"The further you are away from the city, the less people received in terms of benefits from Medicare, it's almost a direct line.
"There is less resources per head, the mortality and morbidity rates are much higher, partly through neglect, partly due to access and partly because of lifestyle, but the bush shouldn't apologise to ask for new resources, they are the backbone of the nation, with mining, they produce our food, yet get half the amount per head Medicare wise, so there is a lot of room to shift that."
"I believe in equity for all Australians and one way to get there is to get the government to have a really good look at the allocation of health dollars per head in smaller communities particularly."
Dr Beaton said support for rural doctors had shifted hugely since he first arrived in Portland.
"I struck a lack of collegiality, it was a bit divided, in part because of the competitive environment in medicine, but the structures we've got now through rural doctors, the college of rural medicine, the whole rural movement, there is now a massive professional support network.
"Rural medicine is now recognised as a specialty, an extended version of general practice that includes hospital care.
"We have strong advocates for rural medicine."
