Annabelle Brayley

“Rural medicine was, and still is, a job for life. You grow with your patients; your life is intertwined with the twists and turns of country life” - Dr Ewen McPhee
President, Rural Doctors Association of Australia

Bush Doctors is a fascinating collection of sixteen stories that celebrates the doctors upon whom the residents of rural and remote areas of Australia rely for everyday and emergency medical care.

I live in regional Australia, some 350km from a capital city, so I have experienced some of the challenges related to accessing health care. The doctors featured in this book work in area’s that are far more isolated, like Yulara in the Northern Territory (1,950 km south of Darwin), Mallacoota in Victoria (500km west of Melbourne), and Fitzroy Valley in Western Australia (1800 km north east of Perth).

Providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia poses unique challenges and it takes resourceful, determined, brave and committed people to do so. These stories provide a glimpse into the life of bush doctors, and the invaluable work they do every day. These general practitioners often almost single handedly service a community of a thousand or more, spread over a large geographical area, with limited resources. They find themselves responsible for a diverse population, treating a wide array of illnesses and injuries, working incredibly long hours to meet their patients needs.

Not only should a general audience find this book engaging, I think it should be required reading for those involved in making decisions about rural health services, especially those “who think they have a gilt-edged right to make decisions about people they’ve never met, who live in places they’ve never heard of, in circumstances they make no effort to understand.”… (lisätietoja)

In Bush Nurses, Annabelle Brayley has collected stories that span a century of nursing in inland Australia, to share the extraordinary challenges that the women (and a few men) upon whom thousands of people rely for everyday and emergency medical care, face in providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia.

In 1912, the Australian Inland Mission (renamed Frontier Services in 1977) was established by Rev John Flynn to bring medical and spiritual services to the outback. With few doctors interested in traveling in remote areas, it was nursing sisters who carried the scheme into the community, travelling by camel, horse, rail and even motor tricycle, providing care for the indigenous and white communities.

In the bush, nursing staff were usually the only source of medical care for hundreds of kilometers or more, and even today that holds true. Nurses tend wounds, birth babies, give inoculations, respond to emergencies, even operate when there is no other choice. They teach classes in preventative health, fundraise for community resources, offer counsel and comfort and more. And it’s not just people they treat, animals often become patients as well in areas where vet care is impossible to access.

Their stories are heartbreaking, amusing, inspiring and incredible. Isolated, with few resources and in tough conditions they are on call 24/7. These first person vignettes provide a glimpse into the life of a bush nurse, and the invaluable contribution they make every day.

Providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia poses unique challenges and it takes resourceful, determined, brave and committed people to do so. People like these.… (lisätietoja)