New medical recruits for a country practice

Two women who went to primary school together are in the first intake of students into the Murray-Darling medical program.

Bridget Fallon and Cassandra Hocking in an anatomy lab at La Trobe University. Picture: David Geraghty

Cassandra Hocking and Bridget Fallon have known each other since they were in Year 2 at Holy Cross Primary School in Gisborne, in regional Victoria.

Now they are both in the first intake of students into the new Murray-Darling medical program, which will train doctors in regional Victoria and NSW with the hope that when they graduate, they will help ease the doctor shortage in regional Australia.

Ms Fallon said the fact the new program was only for rural students made her think it would be possible for her to do what was unusual for young people from her school, and become a doctor. She said there was a lack of doctor role models in her area, 70km northwest of Melbourne, where medical practitioners were mainly older men.

“Where we grew up, I’ve never seen young doctors. It made it hard for us to envisage ourselves in the role,” she said.

“For a while I was hesitant about doing medicine. But when this course came out, it was for rural students only. Suddenly it seemed achievable. It gave me a sense of hope that ‘I can do this’.”

Ms Hocking said at Sacred Heart College in Kyneton, the high school both girls attended, they knew of only one student who went on to do medicine.

Until she heard about the new medical program for rural students from the school’s career counsellor, she had been thinking about medical research or physiotherapy as a career.

“It almost seemed like a gift for us. I came home so excited,” she said.

Ms Hocking said she was a “massive science nerd” and loved engaging with people.

“Coming from a rural area, I can see the effect doctors have in the community,” she said.

She would be very interested in working in rural emergency health one day, she said.

Ms Fallon said she was very interested in paediatrics and could imagine herself working in rural and remote areas, including in ­indigenous communities.

“I want to put myself out of my comfort zone,” she said.

Both women are among the 15 students in the first intake of the new regional medical degree being offered jointly by La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. It starts with a three-year undergraduate bachelor of biomedical science at La Trobe’s Bendigo or Albury-Wodonga campus. If they successfully complete it, students are guaranteed entry to the University of Melbourne’s four-year postgraduate medical program at its Shepparton campus.

The La Trobe-Melbourne degrees are just one pathway being offered to rural medical students under the program, which the federal government has backed with $95 million over the next four years.

Other medical courses are being offered by UNSW at Wagga Wagga, the University of Sydney at Dubbo, Charles Sturt Univer­sity and Western Sydney Uni­versity at Orange, and Monash University at Bendigo and ­Mildura.