Alice Springs

Central Clinic

July 2005 - July 2006

Dry weather - very hot summers, winters are cold dry and sunny. Alice Springs has a great deal happening arts/entertainment wise considering its size and location. There are touring arts groups, regular art house type films showing, art exhibitions. Lots of opportunity to buy beautiful art works from local aboriginal artists. There are lots of beautiful places to explore outside the town - the McDonnell Ranges, Kings Canyon, Uluru etc. There are lots of different sporting groups and gyms.

Standard NTGPE subsidy for moving costs and rental reimbursement. Alice Springs is regarded as "rural" in terms of training.

Central clinic is open from :0830- 5 ish. Working hours are very flexible. I choose to start at 9am. Thursday afternoons have been available to me every week for teaching even though I am doing my advanced term. There are options for working part time. There is a on call roster shared between all the doctors at the clinic. It works out to be about once a month that you hold the clinic mobile phone for a week. Rarely are there calls from patients to see them after hours. (I just had my first call after doing the on call week 3 times). And you are required to do a Saturday morning emergency clinic as part of this as well. There is the opportunity (if you want) to also do some sessions at the Alice Springs after hours GP clinic. I am going to start doing sessions there early in the New Year.

As above

Pay is according to GPET minimum salary or 50% of your billings (which ever is highest). So far, the second option has always worked out to be more.

I am in my advanced term. I have received 1 hour formal teaching session with o ne of two supervisors every week. In addition to this are the weekly doctors lunchtime meetings. I have also had time during sessions to be shown procedural tasks and to perform them myself with supervision. There is also the opportunity to call for help during any of the sessions. There are to NTGPE supervisors working at Central clinic so one of them is almost always available to ask for assistance.

Alice springs (like most of the Territory) has a mostly young population. Central clinic does a lot of work medicals, visa medicals etc. There is plenty of paediatrics, women’s health, chronic disease - diabetes etc. It helps to be staying for more than 6 months to build up a patient base with elderly patients and with chronic disease.

It’s probably not a great place to work if you want to do remote work with lots of procedural experience. It is great for getting some solid "bread and butter" type general practice experience. I've really enjoyed it - hence staying for a whole year.

Jasmine Bell - November 2005