Two new doctors have come to town, looking to help everyone that comes through the doors of the Collie River Valley Medical Centre (CRVMC).
In Year 12, Dr Lauren Gibson decided the pursue medicine and has never looked back since.
Dr Gibson, who is now a general practice registrar in her third year of training, previously worked in obstetrics in Bunbury.
She said working in the CRVMC was an important part of her ongoing focus on rural and remote medicine.
“It’s close enough to Perth and Bunbury that you can ask for advice but further away enough so that you can manage patients on your own,” she said.
“I could never find one thing that I was passionate about in medicine, I always liked to get a mix of everything and so general practice fits me well.
“It’s your cradle to grave medicine, you have a vast variety of people and presentations and the ability to actually form relationships unlike someone in an emergency department.”
Dr Gibson said general practitioners were vital for managing the health and wellbeing of a population.
“You treat whole families and so the time of the old-school GP who knew everything about everyone is something we should actually still be doing,” she said.
“It’s more about continuity with the patients themselves - they’re not sick, they’re stable and we can keep a lot of people out of hospitals with general practice.”
Dr Gibson said the GP role has remained consistent despite changes to the health system over multiple generations.
“In country practice, technology has changed but the simple philosophy behind good general practice has not – it’s that cradle to grave, good first-line medicine preventing people from being in hospital, doing preventative activities, helping people stop smoking or lose weight etc.” she said.
“All those sorts of things haven’t changed it’s the way we deliver them has changed.”
Dr Kanchana Weerasekera worked in Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom before moving to Perth in 2007.
Dr Weerasekera worked at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and St John of God Hospital prior to the change of scenery.
She studied and worked in acute medicine before making the switch to general practice, currently a registrar in her first year of training.
“This is the first time I am working in a small town and doing general practice is new to me, I’ve been in hospital medicine so that’s quite different from general practice,” she said.
“I’m here for 12 months and in that period I’m sure I’m going to meet a lot of people, maybe the whole town for that matter, in the one year.”
Dr Weerasekera said the general practice registrar position covered numerous roles and responsibilities.
“We, as GPs and as a practice, tend to have a good relationship with our patients and the families so that it gets easier for us to communicate with them rather than them just coming and telling us their medical problems,” she said.
“It’s a way of keeping them close, keeping an eye on them, informing them way ahead before something happens and keeping close contact with the patients is what I need to do.”
Dr Weerasekera said the role helped her to identify risks and create a dynamic between herself and her patients.
“In general practice you tend to see chronic diseases more rather than in acute medicine and people suffering from chronic diseases for a longer period of time a their management plans should be established way ahead before it’s too late,” she said.
“Its all about getting a management plan ahead which is the baseline for a GP I think.”
