It was fast food drive-through which changed the course of Alice Climpson’s future career.
“For the longest time I knew I enjoyed science and I like animals, so I always thought I was going to be a vet when I finished school,” she said.
“I did enjoy my veterinary work experience but in Year 11 I was working at McDonald’s and I realised that I actually really liked talking to people because I was always holding up the drive through line chatting to the customers.
“It was then I thought that maybe I would like my patients to be human.”
The new Mackay Hospital and Health Service (HHS) intern has returned to her hometown to begin her supervised training and first rotation on the general surgical ward at Mackay Base Hospital.
Alice grew up at Alligator Creek, about 30km south of Mackay, and attended St Patrick’s College graduating in 2017. She took a gap year before she started studying medicine at James Cook University; she spent six months on a student exchange in Lucera in the Puglia region of Italy followed by returning home and working as a medical receptionist.
After six years of study, her internship in Mackay is a key part of the transition from medical school to independent practice and specialty training with a focus on practical on-the-job training under supervision. She is looking forward to the opportunity to apply, consolidate and expand her clinical knowledge and skills.
“I think this internship is really about getting more core knowledge and building those solid foundations; it’s figuring out how to be a doctor and how to use all that knowledge that you’ve learned and how to put it into practice,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to being exposed to a lot more of the bread-and-butter medical conditions than you would see in a specialised tertiary hospital so I can develop skills that are transferable to a lot of potentially different pathways.
“I’m still very open to everything right now, but I am leaning towards possibly doing basic physician training. I also find medical oncology incredibly interesting and think I could make a real difference in a patient’s life when they are facing difficult times.
“For now, I’m just wanting to get these varied experiences to find out what area I might like to really focus on.”
Alice has been fortunate to have some of her clinical placements in Mackay. She has also done a rural stint at Ingham hospital and an elective in medical oncology at Townsville University Hospital. Her other placements were in general surgery, rural medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, mental health, paediatrics and general practice.
“I am passionate about rural and regional health, but I would say that I am a homebody and very much want to stay in Mackay and improve the health of my own community,” she said.
“I think that’s why it’s really important to get medical students from the regional areas into medicine; because they often want to come back and work.
“A lot of my friends who studied medicine and who are doing their internships in the city still say they want to come back here and work regionally at a later stage in their career.
“I may be bias, but Mackay is a great place to live and work. I look forward to spending the next several years here developing my skills as a doctor,” Alice said.
