Mid North Coast Local Health District Chief Executive Stewart Dowrick (front centre) is pictured with new interns Emily Stanford, Thomas York, Trefyn Francis, Bridie Peters, Ursula Cooper, Nicholas Hui, Angela Tan, Kisal Fonseka, (middle) Sally Heading, Michael Joubert, Mark Roberts, Jayden Conaghan, Callista Raharjo, Emily Mason, Timothy Pedersen, Trihara Gunawardhena, (front) Melwin Nelapati, Emily Chen, Bingzhi He, Molly Robertson and Amy Snow.

Local Health District’s warm welcome to 21 new doctors

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Feb 22, 2021

This article was published 3 years ago.

Mid North Coast Local Health District has welcomed 21 new doctors who are among a record cohort of 1,041 interns starting work in NSW public hospitals this year.

Coffs Harbour Health Campus has welcomed 10 interns while the other 11 junior medical officers (JMOs) have joined the Port Macquarie Base Hospital team.

Member for Coffs Harbour Gurmesh Singh said the young doctors had joined NSW Health at a remarkable time.

“Starting your career as a doctor amid a global health pandemic provides a unique opportunity to play a vital role in our extraordinary health system,” Mr Singh said.

Member for Port Macquarie Leslie Williams said the new interns would be a fantastic asset to our local frontline health staff.

This year, NSW has a record number of 1,041 intern positions, an increase of 35 per cent since 2011.

Of these positions, 150 belong to the Rural Preferential Recruitment scheme, in which interns undertake the majority of their training in rural hospitals. This has doubled in number since 2012. This innovative scheme was designed to encourage interns to work in rural hospitals once they finished their medical school training.

The new doctors started their internships last week and are based in Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie for formal and on-the-job training over the next two years.

Interns are medical graduates who have completed their medical degree and are required to complete a supervised year of practice in order to become independent practitioners.

For more information about the recruitment of Junior Medical Officers, visit the dedicated page on the NSW Health website: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/jmo/Pages/default.aspx