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"How is medicine different in defence?" There's probably a
few differences.
Number one, I guess, the population is kind of captive,
in that they're all our uniform military personnel.
You tend to have a greater degree of ability to follow
them up, for instance.
They don't tend to disappear off into the wilderness for
you, and particularly if they're on the
same ship as you.
If you want to put them on a medication, you can certainly
track them.
You can see them every day, if you want.
They'll never disappear, because they can't really get
that far away from you.
There are a couple of other ways that the medicine in
defence is quite different.
The population that you're dealing with is generally
adult, obviously, and tends to be, I guess, probably fitter
on average than the background population.
You'll see ages between 18 and 65-ish, something like that.
So you won't really see the extreme geriatric problems.
But on the other hand, you'll see different things, like
you'll see a lot of sports medicine.
And you'll see a lot of occupational medicine and
often some sort of specialist or unique things that you
wouldn't normally see outside of this kind of environment,
things like submarine medicine and lots of aviation stuff,
nuclear, biological, chemical defence issues,
that sort of thing.
So I guess that's a few reasons why defence medicine
is different.
Yeah.
Thanks for the question, Travis.
"Is it possible to do specialties besides JP
full-time in any of the forces?," Matthew.
Matthew, it's difficult to do it when you first start paying
back your return of service.
And the reason is that most of the specialist colleges
wouldn't really accept part-time training.
You've obviously got your responsibilities to the
military, particularly if you've been on the defence
university sponsorship sort of arrangement, so you're paying
back some time.
Probably this would go for all services, I would suspect, but
certainly for Navy, the Navy would need you to act as a
general duties medical officer, go to see, look after
Navy people, that sort of thing.
And so doing GP training is probably the easiest.
It's the most compatible with the kind of work that you'd be
doing for the Navy.
And most military doctors tend to be able to finish their
general practise training in the time that they're paying
back the military.
In terms of then looking at doing further training, there
certainly are potential opportunities there to do
further training.
The military is looking at some new platforms coming
online for the Navy and what sort of specialist teams might
be required to staff those.
But on the other hand, that's a fairly small number of
positions, and the vast bulk of the positions would be
doing sort of duties type stuff.
There is opportunities to subspecialise in areas of
military medicine which are not so much outside.
Obviously, aviation medicine is something that is in the
civilian community, but diving and hyperbaric medicine and
things like submarine medicine and other aspects of military
medicine are somewhat unique to the military.
And there's opportunity to subspecialise in that sort of
thing as well.
"How different is my role compared to an Army or Air
Force medical officer?," Phoebe.
Good day, Phoebe.
How different is it?
Well, fundamentally not that different, in that we all look
after members of the defence force.
And obviously, you've got males and females in the
defence force.
There are some differences, I guess.
And one of them would be that where Navy doctors go to sea,
most ships, unless they're the very, very large ships with
the hospital capabilities, would generally only take one
doctor to sea.
Often Army or Air Force units might deploy in a bigger
formation, where there might be more than one doctor.
So typically, on a warship the size of a frigate, for
instance, you would probably have one doctor, one senior
medic, and one junior medic.
So there'd be a team of three, and the doctor would be the
only medical practitioner possibly for hundreds, maybe
1,000 miles in any direction sort of thing.
So that's probably one significant difference that
you end up going to sea.
And telemedicine, so the ability to send things back
home or get a specialist opinion remotely
is certainly there.
The internet capabilities and the communication capabilities
are much better than they used to be, even five years ago.
They've come a long way.
But that's probably one significant difference, that
you can be in a very isolated part of the world.
And that really calls on your clinical skills, because you
won't necessarily have the full suite of MRI, CT,
pathology, all the things that you might normally send
somebody off to have done.
And so I kind of think sometimes it goes back to
history-taking, exam, and good old basic medicine.
And it's refreshing to see that you can actually get by
without some of those things.
And I think people that practise medicine in
developing countries certainly find that
sort of thing as well.
And I've done that as well.
Through the Navy, I've had the opportunity to work overseas
and practise in some fantastic places.
"How will the job of a Naval medical officer change once
the LHDs come into service?" Thanks, Andrew.
The LHDs are basically two very large and very capable
ships that the Navy is acquiring in
the next few years.
And for the Navy this really will be a quantum leap, in
terms of our capability, in a variety of different areas.
Essentially, they're large kind of amphibious ships that
can carry huge amounts of stuff, and certainly much more
than we can carry currently.
In terms of how the job of a Navy medical officer might
change, all of those people will still need all of what
they've always needed, i.e.
routine health care, emergency health care, when required.
This certainly is a plan at a policy level to look at
maintaining or building some more capability to staff
theatre teams, surgical teams, and emergency medicine point
of view, critical care, post-op capability.
I think how that's going to work is probably being worked
on by people that are at a higher pay grade than me.
But I think that there will be, potentially, small numbers
of permanent personnel who are doing those sort of jobs.
But in terms of how the role of most Naval medical officers
will change, I don't know that will change that much, other
than that they'll be big ships, and so they'll require
more doctors.
And so at a guess-- and I'm purely guessing--
there may be the opportunity for medical officers to be
permanently posted to those sort of ships because of the
size of them and the number of people on board.
But I'm not aware that that's finalised or in concrete yet,
so that could change.
"If you're keen on deployments, how much time
can/would I spend doing them versus back home?," Matthew.
Good day, Matthew.
Well one of the other doctors who was in my year was single,
and he didn't have any ties in Australia.
And he spent pretty much the best part of a couple of
years, I would say, away.
Not that he was a away all of that time.
And basically, he kept volunteering for things.
So he'd come back for a while and then go again and come
back for a while and go again.
He also did the around the world trip in, I think, it was
maybe 2008.
And that was something like eight or nine months away.
Obviously, some fantastic port visits to London and New York
and the whole way around the world, basically.
So the average operational deployment to the Middle East
would be in the order of about six months.
So it would be unusual to do longer away in one stretch
than a six-month deployment.
Most doctors who are paying back sort of a five-year
return of service commitment after having been sponsored
through university would probably do one of those.
It would be unusual to do more.
Although, obviously, if we were short of doctors and it
had to be done, then it had to be done.
But you wouldn't expect to be spending two
years at sea, normally.
It was just that he particularly liked it and
wanted to do it.
"Does defence support further study and, if so, how?" There
are a variety of
defense-sponsored study schemes.
One of them is DASS, D-A-S-S. I can't quite remember what it
stands for, but I'm sure somebody in the recruiting
team can probably get the answer for you.
So basically, there are educational scholarships for
people that are currently serving in the military, and
those can be accessed.
There's a standard time to apply for that.
I've accessed them myself.
Usually, the cost of the course, the length of the
course, and, I guess, the relevance of it to what you do
on a daily basis for the Navy would be the key questions.
But when I put in for a course, I didn't have any
difficulty getting that approved.
And that was all signed off and paid for by the military,
which is great.
The other thing that's worth, I guess, knowing is that the
defence university sponsorship scheme actually covers all
your university costs anyway, which was obviously a big
financial boost and a welcome relief
when I was a med student.