“Rural medicine was, and still is, a job for life. You grow with your patients; your life is intertwined with the twists and turns of country life” - Dr Ewen McPhee
President, Rural Doctors Association of Australia

Bush Doctors is a fascinating collection of sixteen stories that celebrates the doctors upon whom the residents of rural and remote areas of Australia rely for everyday and emergency medical care.

I live in regional Australia, some 350km from a capital city, so I have experienced some of the challenges related to accessing health care. The doctors featured in this book work in area’s that are far more isolated, like Yulara in the Northern Territory (1,950 km south of Darwin), Mallacoota in Victoria (500km west of Melbourne), and Fitzroy Valley in Western Australia (1800 km north east of Perth).

Providing health care to the rural and remote areas of Australia poses unique challenges and it takes resourceful, determined, brave and committed people to do so. These stories provide a glimpse into the life of bush doctors, and the invaluable work they do every day. These general practitioners often almost single handedly service a community of a thousand or more, spread over a large geographical area, with limited resources. They find themselves responsible for a diverse population, treating a wide array of illnesses and injuries, working incredibly long hours to meet their patients needs.

Not only should a general audience find this book engaging, I think it should be required reading for those involved in making decisions about rural health services, especially those “who think they have a gilt-edged right to make decisions about people they’ve never met, who live in places they’ve never heard of, in circumstances they make no effort to understand.”