Dr Joanne Kaczmarak is a QRGP intern at Townsville University Hospital, with a dream to one day return home to the Torres Strait Islands and serve her community as a Rural Generalist. Joanne was supported through the QRGP Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Intern Allocation Initiative and shares why she pursued medicine and how her connection to culture drives her desire to change the narrative around Torres Strait Islander people and their health.
My heritage
I’m a Torres Strait Islander (Zenadth Kes). I’m a Mairu gel with ties to Moa and Badu Islands. One of the things I’m most grateful for is that I grew up on Badu Island. My childhood was full of fun, sun, sea and sand…and lots of fishing!
Torres Strait Islanders are a distinct people. There are around 70,000 of us and we make up only 8% of the Indigenous population in Australia. We are a minority within the minority and although we are often grouped together with Aboriginal peoples our histories, our experiences of colonisation and our journeys towards self-determination, are quite different.
The way I think of it is that Aboriginal peoples were the first ‘Australians’ and Torres Strait Islanders were the next ‘Australians’. Torres Strait Islanders have lived for thousands of years in the Torres Straits with and alongside the Aboriginal peoples in the northern most part of Queensland. We’re the blackfellas that moved in next door! Torres Strait Islanders took up residence on uninhabited islands in the Torres Straits and eventually came to be a bridge between mainland Australia and Indonesia/Papua New Guinea.
Why I chose medicine
I was in my early thirties when I decided to pursue medicine – studying medicine later in life is quite common among Indigenous doctors. Becoming a doctor wasn’t really on my radar. Before realising that medicine was my calling, I was an accountant in the public service then a diplomat. It was a long and windy path to becoming a doctor, but what started my journey was hearing the stories of people like Julieka Dhu, Naomi Williams and countless other Indigenous people and families who lost their lives due to failures of our health system. I felt angered and helpless, until I realised that the best way to make change is from within.
Rural generalism has always been the end goal for me. I like the broad scope of practice, the opportunity to develop additional skills and acquire procedural skills, the variety of work (being able to work across both hospital and general practice settings) and the opportunity to live in and serve rural and remote communities. There’s some amazing country out there to explore and there are small towns and communities crying out for doctors. The absolute dream would be to live and work in the Torres Strait one day.
My driving forces
Altruism is my ‘why’. I’ve always felt a strong drive to help others, to serve my community and do good. Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to contribute and help make my community better, and I think that’s a product of my culture and upbringing. I remember as a kid I would come home from playing in the park with injured birds to care for, I would beg my parents to donate to whatever cause came knocking at the door, and I would pick up trash from the street in my neighbourhood. Still to this day, I can’t walk along the beach without returning to the car with a bag of rubbish I’ve picked up. This sense of social duty is embedded in Torres Strait culture and it drives me to contribute wherever and however I can.
I want to help contribute to a community that’s healthy and thriving. Right now, this means helping people at the Townsville Hospital who are experiencing what could possibly be one of the worst days of their life. While I’m helping them with the health issue that’s bought them to the emergency department, I hope to do a good job of representing my people. I want my patients to walk away feeling cared for, heard, and understood.
My mentors
My family is full of strong women who pursued careers in health, leading the way for me to follow. My Aka (grandmother) Bethel was a nurse and when I was a child on Badu Island, I remember community members coming to her for help when the local clinic was unattended. My Aunty Dot was a health worker in Brisbane for many years until she retired, Aunty Jennifer is a Social Worker on Thursday Island, Aunty Jane is a mental health worker, and Aunty Geri is a cook in a regional hospital. I hope to play my part in this family legacy of helping.
I believe everyone has something valuable to impart or share, so I try to learn from every person I meet whether that’s my doctor colleagues, the incredible nurses and allied health staff, or my patients. As an aspiring Rural Generalist I’m fortunate to be able to make new connections, albeit virtual, with a ready-made network of like-minded doctors with similar motivations. On the ground it can be tough though. I’m often the only Indigenous person in the room, which can be isolating at times and so from that perspective medicine can be lonely. But the AIDA network of Indigenous Doctors (which is growing every year) has been a huge support.
I’ve been so fortunate to have met Dr Marjad Page and Dr Anastasia Jensen along my journey, two Indigenous doctors who are doing amazing work paving the path ahead, and who are always ready and willing to share their wisdom and offer advice when I need it. Then there’s the amazing Dr Alicia Veasey who makes excellence look easy and is just so inspiring!
I am eternally grateful to Gillian and Tony Wood who supported me throughout university with a scholarship. These two amazing humans made it possible for me to complete my studies and their scholarships continue to help produce more Indigenous doctors. They are examples of how everyday people can make a massive difference just by doing something. I wouldn’t be a doctor today without Gillian and Tony.
Connection to country
As a child I lived on Badu Island where I was immersed in my community and raised in my culture. It 100% shaped who I am and how I approach medicine and healthcare today. We didn’t have a permanent general practitioner on Badu, so I know what it’s like to not have access to a doctor and how hard it can be to have to travel away from home to get healthcare. This is definitely a strong driver behind me wanting to work in rural or remote places.
Respect is a huge part of Torres Strait Islander culture, so I do my best to treat every patient with the respect I would give to my elders no matter who they are, where they come from, or how they came to be in hospital. Having grown up hearing about traditional healers and traditional healing practices, I’m open minded about traditional and alternative medicines so patients feel comfortable talking to me about home remedies they’ve tried before coming to hospital. I believe strongly that bush foods and bush medicines will play a prominent role in the future of health and healthcare, and in Australia we’re lucky enough to have the world’s oldest knowledge bank on the superfoods that have been cultivated here for thousands of years!
My advice to First Nations students
Make sure you know your ‘why’ (your reason for wanting to pursue medicine) and make sure it’s a good one. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it needs to be compelling enough to make you want to jump through the hoops and claw your way over the obstacles, because studying medicine is really hard. Michael Jordan was motivated by spite, Mark Zuckerberg was motivated by popularity, Nelson Mandela was motivated by injustice – that was all they needed. Make sure you can articulate your reason for wanting to be a doctor then go for it. Do whatever it takes to make it happen.
There will be sacrifices and there will be times when you won’t have room in your life for anything but studying medicine. You will outgrow some of the people around you, but you will also find new people who share your passions and interests. If you know your ‘why’ then you will achieve your goals, and it will all be worth it in the end.
My future as a Rural Generalist
It’s about following and developing my interests as a doctor and building a skillset that’s valuable for underserved rural and remote communities. I love going off the beaten track, so I’m keen to live and work in places I haven’t been to yet.
The ultimate goal is to go back to the Torres Strait and to serve my community. I want to join the growing number of Torres Strait Islander doctors who are leading health research on our people, to help change the narrative about us and our peoples’ health. Positive change starts with having ownership of what is written about us in academic journals, because that influences what students are taught about us and in turn it shapes the attitudes of future doctors and other health practitioners.
Only people who are directly impacted by research can truly understand the impact that research has. That is why I believe we need to see more research on Torres Strait Islander health that is led by Torres Strait Islander doctors and academics.
There are currently 127 doctors who identify as Torres Strait Islanders, and we can all be contacted through AIDA. I would like to implore all the researchers and ethics committees out there to consider this the next time a proposal is made.
Dr Joanne Kaczmarek | QRGP trainee
