I’m a psychiatry registrar based at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, currently on a 6-month paediatric psychiatry term in the Northern Rivers. When I was given the choice of location to undertake my rural rotation, I jumped at the chance to return to Lismore. In 2010, I undertook a year-long rural placement in Lismore. The clinical variety and acuity I was exposed to was unparalleled by anything I’d seen in Sydney. But those experiences would have counted for little without the foundations laid by the UCRH.
The welcoming and caring nature of the UCRH staff was so valuable. The UCRH staff was always approachable, and if they didn’t have the answer to any of my questions, they knew the person who would. The education program they coordinated puts students face-to-face with medical specialists and key decision-makers on the North Coast in order to make sense of all those clinical encounters we’d see on rotation.
Writing about my experience with the UCRH doesn’t really do it justice; there are too many examples where the staff would go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that we had everything that we might need in order to make the most of our time in Lismore. They clearly recognised how important that phase in our medical education was. I have the UCRH to thank not only for the clinician I have become, but also for making it such an easy decision to return to Lismore.
Paran Nadeswaran
