Home town advantage: how staying put benefits a local community

In her final year of high school, Georgia Austin knew that she’d have to relocate to either Brisbane, Gold Coast or Townsville to study medicine in Queensland.  

For a girl born and raised on a cotton property between Moura and Theodore, who moved to Toowoomba for secondary school, Brisbane offered the most desirable commute time to get to her two homes of Toowoomba (1½ hour drive) and the family farm (7 hour drive).

UQ’s Regional Medical Pathway is about to monumentally change the way those living in regional, rural and remote locations – like Georgia – make decisions about pursuing medical careers.

Georgia was just five years old when her father unexpectedly passed away, so she learned the harsh realities of life and death at a young age. Raised by her mother, who was a medical receptionist, Georgia decided early on that she wanted to pursue a career in medicine.

“I saw the importance of GPs in small townships and could see how exhausting it was for patients to have to re-live their medical history and re-form those trusted relationships when there was a change in medical professionals, or just not have access to the specialised care they needed in the first place,” she explains.  

Georgia was accepted into UQ’s Doctor of Medicine program through the provisional entry pathway, completing an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science before diving straight into medicine.