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It’s a GP registrar’s life - Meredith Betts |
 The word is out in the GP registrar community in Sydney. For those coming to the area for their six month rural stints, Lennox Head is the must-stay destination
Meredith Betts took this advice on board and duly rented a spacious townhouse near the beach. She has a bright and spacious home, filled with her things from Sydney and her musical instruments, a spare bedroom for visitors and a study. And great neighbours who have been feeding her soup and friendship when she comes home late on cold, wet evenings.
Meredith was already familiar with the region as she is an old school friend of Coraki GP, Rosemary Craig. After high school Meredith went on to study communications, Rosemary to study pharmacy. However, both had second thoughts and a year later met up at Hornsby TAFE to resit their HSC to get into medicine. It was to prove a fruitful relationship: “We worked our guts out in a friendly and really competitive way,” Meredith recalls.
Each won a TAFE award for coming top of their class and both were accepted into medicine in Sydney University.
Meredith has struggled with this competitive and ambitious streak however and contemplated giving up medicine many times because she was not finding fulfillment in her work. She had a real drive to be a specialist because she wanted to succeed and believed this was the way to do it. She says she had “Royal North Shore ideas” about what it meant to be a successful doctor, which was hospital and specialist based.
“It was misplaced ambition really. I don’t think I had a great view of general practice. It was a bias based in ignorance.”
She has worked in several fields in medicine, including three years of paediatrics training, eventually doing a stint in general practice. She really enjoyed general practice, discovering it was a worthwhile thing to do, that anything could come through the door, and that much of the knowledge was not in text books but was passed on by mentors.
She found she didn’t really want to be a specialist at all; she wanted to do general practice and music, but part-time. She received a one-year exemption from her vocational registration training because of her hospital work and once she finishes her six-month stint at the Goonellabah Medical Centre at the end of June, she will complete the rest of her registrar training part time so that she can also concentrate on her music.
Meredith started playing the violin when she was nine years old. She gave up in high school and college, taking it up again when she discovered Celtic music. She used to hate the daily practice, now she looks forward to it.
Five years ago she joined Mothers of Intention, a five-member band that has just released its first album, First time. They play folk inspired covers, original material, trad ballads and instrumentals using the bodhran, dumbeck, guitar, violin, recorder, percussion and vocals. She recently returned from playing at the St Albans Folk Festival just north of Sydney where they were all greatly encouraged by the appreciation of the audiences.
Meredith also plays the banjo and is trying to learn the bodhran. Not long after arriving in the area, she consulted Ballina physio Andrew Hutton who, it turned out, was a banjo player and like herself, wanted to learn the mandolin. Then at the music shop in Byron she was put onto a group of professional musicians who play casually for fun. She also plays with colleague Ruth Tinker who dusted off her flute after a 10-year break.
Meredith has very much enjoyed doing her rural term on the Northern Rivers. It’s been a wonderful experience to see what it’s like in the country she says and she believes that registrars should be “strongly encouraged” to do six months in the country during their training. “They might really enjoy it,” she says although she acknowledges the difficulties those with family ties might face.
She says that the mentoring role of her GP supervisors is really valuable. There is a huge difference between the hospital system and general practice, which takes a much more holistic approach to mentoring, where her tutorials can be about anything from learning resuscitation techniques to debriefing about a tough patient or a bad day.
“It is so important. How can we treat other people if we are miserable ourselves?”
She is very impressed with the push for GP wellbeing in this area and the idea of doctors looking after themselves - mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. The public hospital system desperately needs a Hilton Koppe, who runs the division’s wellbeing program and has travelled extensively in Australia and New Zealand promoting the program and training GPs to treat other doctors.
For her it was serendipitous that she discovered general practice and got out of the hospital system. In fact if she hadn’t she probably would no longer be practising medicine. For now she is enjoying her training and music and is comfortable with the decision to combine the two and become a part-time doctor. Further down the track she would like to get into the education side of medicine and finds the idea of delivering lifestyle education in schools particularly appealing.
First time by Mothers of Intention costs $25. Contact Meredith Betts on mbetts@gmc.net.au
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