Rural
Albury
Biripi Aboriginal Medical Service
Broken Hill
Coffs Harbour
Dubbo
Goulburn
Kempsey
Lismore
Nowra
Orange
Port Macquarie (further information provided below)
Tamworth
Wagga Wagga

Inner Regional
Maitland
Shell Harbour
Tweed Heads
Wyong

The following information has been provided by the services themselves.

Training, Working and Living in Port Macquarie

Port Macquarie is a great place to live (www.portmacquarieinfo.com.au) and it is an excellent place to get broad psychiatric experience in a pleasant rural environment with a friendly team and supportive psychiatrists.

Port Macquarie is an expanding area and its Mental Health Service is also expanding. Our inpatient ward is currently being refurbished and the Community Team is increasing in capacity. There has been increased funding for all positions including VMO psychiatrists and Registrar/CMO's.

We are still a relatively small service which consists of an integrated Inpatient and Community Team. The service has been supported by three VMO psychiatrists who all live and work in the area. Recently a psychiatrist has been recruited to work one day a week in Port Macquarie and another day at Kempsey Hospital which is a District Hospital in the Port Macquarie network. Recruitment is underway for another day a week consultant psychiatrist and both the "fly in" psychiatrists will be mainly working with the Community Mental Health Team.

There is a RMO who rotates from the Royal North Shore Hospital who works predominantly in the Inpatient Ward which, after refurbishment, will be a 12 bed ward capable of taking up to six involuntary patients. We expect to have an Intern working with the Inpatient Registrar from Jan 2008 with the RMO to work with the Community Registrar.

We are now funded for two Registrar/CMO positions, one of whom will work predominently in the Inpatient Service and the other will predominently work with the Community Teams.

Local Training, Local Success

Since last year we have been part of a large training network based on Sydney South West Area Health Service but it has not been reliable in sending us Registrars so we have been recruiting Registrars ourselves. Our last registrar had done a psychiatry term as a RMO in Port Macquarie, got a taste for psychiatry, and commenced her training at Royal North Shore Hospital. She returned in the second half of last year for six months and while she was with us she passed her clinical exams.

Our previous Registrar stayed with us for two and half years and also passed her exams.

What do you do?

A broad range of clinical experience and the opportunity to do work that is valued.

I have made training and clinical leadership the priorities for the doctors who work in our service so you will be encouraged to take responsibility in a way that will prepare you to be a Consultant Psychiatrist.

You would get exposure to psychiatry of old age because Port Macquarie has one of the highest percentages of older people in New South Wales, if not Australia. We have two visiting psychogeriatricians and one of the resident psychiatrists works predominently in old age psychiatry.

Port Macquarie has a relatively small proportion of indigenous people but Kempsey, which is part of our Network, and is only 40 minutes drive away, has a Mental Health Service that caters for the high number of indigenous people in that area. The local Aboriginal Mental Health Service also employs a VMO psychiatrist and one of our previous Registrars spent a term working at the Aboriginal Medical Service in Kempsey.

The work would not generally be onerous. Normal working hours are: weekdays 8am to 4:30pm and you would do one week night first on-call (with the psychiatrist second on-call) and one weekend a month, first on-call.

Accommodation and a hospital car are provided. Your return air fares would be paid and that you would be paid at a rate above the level of your seniority.

For further information or to show interest contact:

Dr Brian Parsonage

Clinical Director of Psychiatry

Port Macquarie Base Hospital

Ph: 02 6584 1310

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Placements with visiting services may be available under special circumstances.

Locations are classified as follows:
Rural -  Rural or remote areas as defined by Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Areas scale;
Regional – Areas rated as metropolitan on the RRMA but with difficulties of remoteness as indicated by a score over 1.84 on the Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia.
Inner Regional – Areas not rated as either rural on RRMA or regional on ARIA.  Services to rural communities may be based in these areas.
These categories are for the purpose of comparison only and do not reflect any difference in the quality of training experiences at these locations.

Notes:
Rural was defined for the purposes of this analysis as either:

• A score of 3 or higher on the Rural Remote and Metropolitan Areas Scale, indicating a rural or remote area;
• A score of 1.84 or higher on the Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia, indicating issues of remoteness