Monash University program to encourage more doctors to head to the country

Patients in parts of the state are waiting up to nine months to see an eye specialist and a further year to be treated as the surgery waitlist blows out.

A major shortage of eye specialists in parts of rural Victoria is putting vulnerable patients at risk of going blind for treatable conditions.

One of the hardest hit regions is Mildura and surrounding areas in Victoria’s northwest where some patients are waiting up to nine months to see an eye specialist and then potentially a further year for surgery.

Consultant ophthalmologist Rahul Chakrabarti says the most common eye issue in children is not identifying the need for eye assessment in the first place.

Subsequent challenges, Dr Chakrabarti says, include not receiving spectacles in a timely manner, and being compliant in instructions in how to improve vision at a young age.

For adults, he said, it is cataracts, diabetic eye disease, age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Consultant ophthalmologist Rahul Chakrabarti says the most common eye issue in children is not identifying the need for eye assessment in the first place.

Monash University has, since 2021, run a program it hopes can help address eye health by offering training to Mildura general practitioners and medical students in ophthalmology through its School of Rural Health.

Dr Chakrabarti is based in Melbourne, but runs the clinics and also provides hands-on tutorials for Monash University medical students in Mildura.

He is the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists’ director of the Victorian Training Network, and a former Monash University student who did some of his training placements in Mildura.

He says he highly recommends rural placements to his students.

Dr Chakrabarti has a passion for rural health having grown up in Whyalla in South Australia where his father was a mining engineer. As a secondary student he saw first-hand the long wait his mother had for gall bladder surgery because of the difficulties in getting a surgeon to a regional town.

Monash University's Dr Rahul Chakrabarti highly recommends rural placements to his students.

“It’s important that people in regional areas have the same access to the breadth of sight-threatening surgeries that those who reside in metropolitan areas have, which is why I am so happy to be able to bring my clinical skills and training to Mildura regularly,” Dr Chakrabarti said.

He travels to Mildura once a month where he is one of two visiting ophthalmologists covering the region from north of Bendigo to Broken Hill and across the border to parts of South Australia.

“On an average day I see up to 50 patients,” he said.

“My colleague will see a similar number. We manage different conditions, so all up we see more than 100 patients in a day.

“They may have waited anywhere between six to nine months to have a review.

“We perform the surgery at the public hospital, but my waitlist has now blown out to a year and for some conditions, such as cataract, in that interval the condition has got worse.”

One of the hardest hit areas for the shortage of specialists is Mildura.

It is also the distance, Dr Chakrabarti acknowledges, that makes the region one of the hardest to service and one of the more difficult to attract a permanent ophthalmologist.

“It is an hour’s flight from Melbourne or a 700 km drive,” he said. “I did the drive during the pandemic, the distance can be a deterrent. You have to have a genuine will and the motivation to make an improvement to the region.

“I have an optimistic vision for the area. I think it will be difficult to attract an ophthalmologist permanently to the region, the solution I think will be to encourage more colleagues to contribute as a team to share the workload.”