A diversity of career choices in a rural setting

9 May 2008

Bendigo offers the chance to make your mark in a thriving regional centre. Your challenging career takes place in an area offering a city lifestyle and the beauty of the bush.

IF living in a traffic-jam free zone, low rent area and having opportunities to take greater responsibility for patient care appeal to you, then consider the advantages of working in a major Victorian country centre like Bendigo.

Bendigo Health is an expanding regional health organisation that can offer health professionals an opportunity to enjoy a challenging career in a location offering the advantages of city life combined with the beauty and freedom of the bush.

Bendigo is a thriving provincial city of 100,000 people, only 90 minutes from Melbourne.

Surrounded by more than 30 vineyards and many boutique wineries, Bendigo is a rapidly developing regional city that has much to offer families, couples and individuals.

Good restaurants, extensive cultural activities and the great outdoors are all on your doorstep.

With a staff of almost 3000 and a catchment area of onequarter of Victoria, Bendigo Health is one of the state’s major health service providers.

A 672-bed multi-disciplinary service, Bendigo Health incorporates medical, surgical, rehabilitation, psychiatric care, aged care, ambulatory and community services.

One in every four members of the community uses Bendigo Health’s services each year, in a catchment of more than 300,000 people.

Bendigo Health annually treats more than 29,000 inpatients, deals with more than 39,000 emergency attendances and 1200 babies are born in the hospital each year. These services are complemented by a 60-bed rehabilitation unit, 12-bed critical care unit and five operating theatres where more than 10,000 surgical procedures are performed annually.

The organisation provides services in emergency, maternity, women’s health, medical imaging, pathology, rehabilitation, community services, residential aged care, psychiatric care, community dental, hospice, palliative care, cardiology, cancer services and renal dialysis to the people of the Loddon-Mallee region.

The three main campuses of Bendigo Health are in Bendigo, with many services under the Bendigo Health banner offered in other centres such as Mildura, Echuca, Swan Hill, Kyneton and Castlemaine. The diversity of locations offers a wide variety of experience.

Bendigo Health’s new interns arrived earlier this year with seven direct recruits (one more than last year) plus another 50 on 10-week rotations from Austin Health.

Working as a junior doctor can be very rewarding and also very demanding. The internship provides the recruits with an opportunity to further develop their skills in the areas of general medicine, general surgery, emergency, medical oncology, orthopaedics and rehabilitation.

This year, several of the interns have come to Bendigo Health from Bendigo’s Monash Medical School.

These interns have completed their studies in Bendigo and have chosen to begin their training locally.

Of last year’s interns (who are now hospital medical officers, or HMOs), one will continue working at Bendigo Health in 2008. With the shortages of doctors in rural Australia, it is good news that extra interns are studying and training in Bendigo.

In Bendigo, you won’t get lost in a crowd and will have the chance to make your mark.
 

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