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The once-struggling Channel Country General Hospital in Bedourie is reportedly sorting through a backlog of thousands of rural placement requests.
This follows the area’s well-noted transformation from a sleepy fruit growing district into one of Western Queensland’s most praised wine regions.
As seen in Central West New South Wales, Southern Western Australia and most of the districts surrounding Adelaide – the idea of spending a whole year swishing through sample sized glasses of shiraz has revolutionised the standard of rural medicine in Bedourie.
The Channel Country General Hospital says while they are slightly concerned about the amount of interns rocking up to work with crimson coloured teeth, it is a real privilege to host some of the brightest minds from the big city universities.
As imagined, this trend has in turn created a concerning shortage of doctors in towns that don’t have the resources to treat half-pissed medicine students to a chilly afternoon drinking wine until they begin making out with each other in the back of a mini-van.
Towns like Blackwater, Mt Isa and Broome have responded to this challenge by trying their best to grow grapes, but inevitably settling for craft brewery tours – which has resulted in an influx of overweight of trainee doctors with sugar headaches in these historic mining areas.
