General Practice Matters 21 February 2019: Cancer screening toolkit, health minister meetings, cultural awareness training and more

When he left school, Toby Gardner didn't intend to study medicine. He wanted to get into art school, but without a fully prepared folio, opted to apply for a psychology degree on the Gold Coast instead.

The Newstead Medical GP, who was raised on the Glitter Strip, eventually took the GAMSAT and was offered a place at the University of Queensland to study medicine.

"I don't have any doctors in my family, didn't know much about medicine or medical careers so didn't really know what I was in for. Nowadays however, I can't imagine myself doing anything else - except wine-making," he says.

Dr Gardner spent several years training in rural Queensland before he considered moving into general practice.

"Though the work was great fun (in rural Queensland), it was extremely exhausting and I was never home, working crazy hours," he explains.

He eventually heard about third or fourth round places in GP training in Tasmania and applied, shrugging off negative and inaccurate assumptions from his colleagues in the process.

"My colleagues were horrified, thinking that GP work was 'beneath me' - whatever that means - and that I was wasting all my skills. All I really wanted was my life back."

Here’s what else he told Primary Health Tasmania:

The biggest misconception about being a GP: "The biggest misconception is that GP work is easy. Though not filled with the same life-threatening situations one faces every day in hospital, one has to know about all facets of medicine in a much broader sense, and lack of availability to specialists can allow GPs to up-skill in areas of medicine."
His experience teaching at UTAS: “I have been teaching at UTAS for 11 years in both general practice, internal medicine and emergency medicine. My role is largely teaching procedural skills and management of emergency presentations - all scenarios taken from my work in rural Queensland. This allows me to keep up my skills, keep me up to date with current trends, though not have to work after hours or on weekends to do it. It also allows me to meet the excellent medical students that come through the Launceston Clinical School, many of whom I've subsequently employed as GPs in my practice."
On finding home (for now) in Tasmania: "We moved here in 2006 for a tree-change after coming down on a holiday. We didn't know anyone down here though wanted a safe place to raise kids and were concerned about water security and population growth in south east Queensland. We also love cool-climate food and wine, and all of the close friends that we have made down here work in wine and/or hospitality. We certainly never imagined we'd stay; rather we thought we'd check it out for a few years then move back north, but the schools have been great, my practice is humming, and we have an amazing group of close friends now which have kept us here. Tassie is definitely home for us now."