A town of two thousand loses its only doctor

Marie Cherry, eighty-two, has lived in Moura for more than fifty years and battles incurable breast cancer. Soon there may be no doctor in town to treat her.

“I'm beating it at the moment … but you do live in fear that the time when you really need [a doctor], there's not going to be one here.”

One doctor served the whole town

Moura sits two hours from Rockhampton on Queensland's coal belt. A single GP worked at both the medical centre and hospital, supported only by occasional locum doctors.

The workload was unsustainable

Rod Martin, president of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, worked as a locum in Moura for two weeks. He said the single doctor faced significant demand.

“As the only doctor in town for two thousand people … there's lots of health needs and particularly in a town like that where they hadn't had a regular doctor for quite a while, there were lots of things to try and catch up on.”

Patients went without care

Kyarah Williams took her nine-month-old baby to the hospital with diarrhoea and vomiting but never saw a doctor. She was sent home and told to feed her baby breast milk ice cubes.

“I felt like there was no urgency in how he was assessed, there was … no sense of care at all, I was just told to go home and figure it out, pretty much.”

Advocates warned for months

Debbie Elliott, a health advocate for thirteen years, urged Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service to bring in more temporary doctors to support the permanent GP for six months. No response came.

“The issue was, six months prior we were saying, 'This is going to happen, you need to help us, please give support'. And there was just no response to that.”

Advocates step back in anger

Elliott has resigned as chair of the local community advisory group. The group itself has stopped working with the health service, saying it has never seen the local health service in such a dire state.

“A lot of people are very angry because they know that we had a doctor, he wanted to stay. Now we're not going to have a doctor.”

Health service promises recruitment

Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service says it is actively recruiting for medical officer positions and will continue to find locum support. Moura has funding allocated for two doctor positions.

A nearby town found a different path

Thirty minutes away in Theodore, a private medical clinic has kept staff by training a steady stream of medical students. Owners Elizabeth and Ben Clarkson say this shows doctors a potential rural career.

“They can come out to these rural communities and see their expanded scope of practice, and they can see a potential career.”

Early care prevents hospital crises

Dr Elizabeth Clarkson says the vast majority of work happens in primary care, reducing hospital admissions. Early intervention and identifying problems before they worsen are crucial for patient outcomes.

“We don't want to see people when they're coming in really unwell because they haven't been able to maybe see a GP for several years.”