Moonee Ponds GP Dr David Hore retires after 65 years in medicine
He could be Melbourne’s oldest GP, but this Moonee Ponds doctor has no plans of slowing down now he’s retired. Newfangled gadgets are beyond him, but he says maybe it’d be better if more doctors took things back to basics.
West
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There was no such thing as the internet when Melbourne GP David Hore joined the medical profession as a graduate in 1956.
Smartphones didn’t buzz in people’s pockets and doctors paid more attention to their patients instead of their computer screen, Dr Hore said.
“The year I graduated was the year Melbourne had the Olympic Games and that was the year black and white television started,” Dr Hore said.
“The essence of being a good doctor is you’ve got to talk to patients, you can’t just rush them through the door. You’ve got to talk to them. That way they know you care about them.
“Most patients say to me they go to another doctor and all they do is look at the computer and they’ve got their fingers on the computer keys. What I do is everyone who comes to me gets an examination, I put them up on the couch.”
Dr Hore, aged 87, has worked in Moonee Ponds for about 65 years.
In that time he said he’s delivered more than 3000 babies and treated three generations within the same family.
But he said it was never expected he, a boy from Melbourne’s inner west, would join the medical profession.
His parents were working class people and while delighted with their son’s career choice, Dr Hore said he was never pressured to become a doctor.
“I don’t know why I wanted to be a doctor, when I was a little boy of about four I just said I want to be a doctor.
“No one from Yarraville in those days became a doctor. It was an industrial suburb. My parents didn’t think it would ever happen. Like all parents they said, ‘Well, do your best’.”
His parents, mum a cashier at a butcher and dad an electrician, worked to put food on the table and support his studies.
But Dr Hore said he studied hard and was awarded scholarships, and he worked part time washing dishes and at a timber yard to help bring in money.
Today, the grandfather of eight and great grandfather to one proudly says he’s one of five doctors in the family.
Two of his daughters joined the profession and married husbands also in the field, while his third daughter works in law.
This week marked Dr Hore’s, a self confessed technophobe unfamiliar with computers and newfangled gadgets, final week as a licensed practitioner.
But he said he has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
After working seven days a week for years, he said he intends to go to work every day for at least the next year to finish paperwork.
He’ll also be joined by his wife, Val, of 66 years, who he met in kindergarten and does all his typing at the clinic.
“I just love what I’m doing,” Dr Hore said.
“When they come in they’re not patients, you treat them like friends.”
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