“Why I started”

Rural Generalism is the career Dr Sarah Saunders didn’t know she needed.

In November 2017, she was working in a metro NHS hospital on a cold, grey day. The wind and rain lashed against the window panes as she opened an email that would change the course of her career — a job advertisement in the British Medical Journal promising “year-round sunshine” and a “true tropical experience”.

On a whim, she applied.

A graduate of the University of Bristol, Dr Saunders had built her early medical career in the UK, but had always felt drawn to something beyond the familiar.

On 18 January 2018, Dr Saunders arrived in Darwin. And, as they say, the rest is history.

She had never been to Australia before, and by her own admission hadn’t done much research. She remembers telling people she planned to spend her first weekend off photographing koalas and kangaroos around the hospital and accommodation.

It begged the question, “did you do any research before you came here?”

To which Sarah replied, “a little… but the truth is, not really. And in many ways I’m glad I didn’t, because otherwise I might have been too scared to come!”

The early months were a significant culture shock. Dr Saunders recalls crying every night for the first month, with only pride keeping her from returning home.

Then something shifted.

Perhaps it was Cyclone Marcus and witnessing the extraordinary way a hospital and community come together in crisis. Perhaps it was the sheer breadth of medicine she was practising. But most of all, it was the patients.

“The more I learned about rural medicine, about making clinical decisions that also considered a person’s cultural and social context, as well as the landscape and rurality of services, the more I fell in love with my job.”

After a year in Darwin, Dr Saunders moved to Alice Springs, where she encountered Rural Generalists for the first time. Seeing the scope of practice and the deep connections they had with their patients proved pivotal. That year, she signed up to ACRRM.

Her training has been almost exclusively in the Northern Territory and in MMM 6 and 7 locations. She recently became an ACRRM Fellow and describes it as a deeply fulfilling milestone in her career.

“I take pride in knowing my patients, advocating for their care, and providing holistic medicine to people living in some of the most remote parts of this country.”

Originally from a small village in East Sussex in the UK and the first in her family to attend university, Dr Saunders always knew she wanted to work abroad. She values that her ACRRM training has given her the ability to practise globally.

Her career has already taken her to remote areas in India and Africa, and she looks forward to what comes next in her journey with ACRRM.