Choosing to work as a doctor in a small town can mean it takes four hours to pick up the paper.
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Just on the short walk to the local newsagents, they'll bump into many friendly and familiar faces because joining a small community as a GP throws them right into the heart of it.
"Patients are everywhere," laughs Professor Peter O'Mara, a rural GP, academic and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioner's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Chair.
"Straight away, you're immersed in that community experience and you feel like you're part of something greater.
"That's why doctors want to go to and want to stay in these rural areas."
While local GPs do have to be mindful to not conduct too many "corridor consultations" out of hours, being part of a tight-knit community and seeing the difference they make is unbelievably rewarding, O' Mara says.
Six weeks after diagnosing one long-suffering patient with depression, he remembers, the man's daughter booked an appointment to see him.
"'I just wanted to thank you for giving me my dad back' she said," O'Mara recalls, emotion audible in his voice.
"I can't tell you how that makes me feel - even right now when I think about it - to think we can have that kind of impact on people's lives."
As part of a call-to-arms to encourage doctors to consider a career in rural or Aboriginal health, the RACGP has launched a digital project called This Rural Life - a place where members can share their incredible stories of life in the field.
The variety, complexity and importance of the role of a GP in rural communities around Australia cannot be undervalued, the RACGP says.
Rural Chair Dr Michael Clements warns that the shortage of specialist rural and remote GPs is dire and that the pandemic and restrictions on travel have made matters worse.
The good news is that "research shows doctors who train in rural Australia are more likely to remain working and living there", he says.
A survey in June found the overwhelming majority of them, 88 per cent, want to stay in the bush.
More doctors and medical students should contemplate making the move because it is "incredibly rewarding", O'Mara says.
People who come to small communities in the outback gain a community, a strong sense of social justice and have a cultural experience - as well as a medical one, he says.
Unlike city GPs who have to "wave their patient off" in the back of an ambulance if there's an emergency, country GPs must be much more hands-on.
"You still call the ambulance but you jump in the back of the ambulance and go to the hospital and initiate treatment there," O'Mara says.
"It's a vastly different structure."
Unlike other jobs in medicine, where a doctor may not have much or regular contact with the patients they help again, a rural GP enjoys daily reminders of the difference they make.
"I can be having a bad day and then I'll see people walking around town and I'll know that if it hadn't been for my actions, I might not have seen them walking around town," O'Mara says.
"It's pretty special."
Australian Associated Press