General Practitioner

General Practitioner – Dubbo Health Hub

We are genuinely excited to be looking for another GP to join our growing team at Dubbo Health Hub.

You might be newly fellowed and thinking about where you would like to establish yourself, or you may have many years of experience and be looking for a change. You might have particular clinical interests in mental health, women's or men's health, chronic disease management, eating disorders, skin cancer medicine or something completely different. You may simply really enjoy the breadth and variety of General Practice and looking after people and families over many years.

We are open to all of that because, more than anything, we are looking for the right person.

We would love to find someone who cares about their patients and about doing their job well; who enjoys being part of a team; who is curious and reflective; and who wants to continue learning regardless of how long they have been practising medicine.

Dubbo Health Hub opened in 2023, although many of us had worked together in Dubbo for a long time before that, with some members of our team now having worked together for more than 15 years. We wanted to create the kind of General Practice we ourselves value — retaining the continuity, relationships and personal care of traditional country medicine while providing contemporary, evidence-based and trauma-informed healthcare.

We believe that where you live should never determine your right to quality healthcare, and we care deeply about providing excellent healthcare to people who choose to live in rural and regional Australia.

For us, good General Practice means getting to know our patients over time. Many of our patients want a doctor who knows them, understands something of their family and circumstances, and remembers what has happened since they last came through the door. We value that continuity and want our doctors to have enough time to listen properly, think about what is going on and provide the sort of care they believe their patients need.

Our standard consultations are therefore 20 minutes. We know that not every consultation needs 20 minutes, but sometimes it takes time to work out what is really going on, particularly when someone's health is affected by a number of different things or when the reason they have come to see you isn't necessarily the first thing they tell you. We don't want our doctors to feel that every consultation is a race against the clock, and we don't want our patients to feel that they have to squeeze what matters to them into a few minutes.

We also believe that we cannot provide this kind of healthcare without looking after the people who provide it. General Practice can be enormously rewarding, but it can also be demanding, and the health and wellbeing of our team is genuinely important to us.

We want our doctors to have professional autonomy, flexibility around how they work, support from their colleagues when they need it and the opportunity to have a fulfilling life outside medicine. We value the fact that our team knows each other well enough to ask for advice, talk through a difficult situation, share knowledge and have a laugh together. Clinical excellence matters to us, but so do kindness, humility and being someone other people enjoy working alongside.

DHH has grown considerably since opening, but becoming a large practice simply for the sake of being large has never been our goal. We want to build a practice where good clinicians want to work and stay, and where growth doesn't come at the expense of our patients, our staff or the culture we have worked hard to build.

We have GPs, nursing, dietetics and administration within our team and are continuing to develop our allied health services. Over time, we want DHH to become genuinely transdisciplinary — not simply a practice where different health professionals happen to work from neighbouring rooms, but somewhere clinicians know one another, communicate and share their expertise where that benefits the patient.

We are also a GP registrar training practice and regularly teach medical students. We enjoy teaching and value having people around us who ask questions, bring different ideas and make us think about our own practice.

Why Dubbo?

Dubbo is a large and growing regional city and an important medical centre for Central and Western NSW. We have a substantial health precinct, public and private hospitals, specialist services and the University of Sydney School of Rural Health, where students can complete their entire four-year medical degree. There is an active community of GPs, specialists, hospital clinicians, registrars, academics and medical students, so rural practice here certainly doesn't mean professional isolation.

Outside medicine, there is a lot to like about living here. Taronga Western Plains Zoo is on our doorstep, the Macquarie River runs through town, and we have excellent schools, sporting and community groups, restaurants and cafés. Housing remains considerably more accessible than in many metropolitan areas, and getting around town generally takes minutes rather than hours.

Dubbo is also very well connected for a regional city. Our airport is only a few kilometres from the CBD, with direct services to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, amongst other destinations. That makes it quite possible to enjoy the benefits of rural life without feeling disconnected from family, friends or professional opportunities elsewhere.

There is something particularly rewarding about practising medicine in a regional community as well. You get to know people over time, often care for several generations of the same family, see broad and interesting medicine and have the opportunity to make a very real difference in a community where good doctors are genuinely needed.

Some of us were born in this region and have very deep connections here; others came to Dubbo for study, training or work and ultimately decided to stay. We think it is entirely possible to have an interesting and rewarding medical career here while still having the time and space to build a really good life outside work.

Who are we looking for?

We don't have a long list of criteria beyond the appropriate medical qualifications and registration. We are much more interested in who you are, how you practise and whether we are likely to work well together.

We would love to meet someone who enjoys getting to know their patients; communicates well and enjoys working with other people; is willing to ask for help and equally willing to offer it; and wants to continue learning, growing and reflecting on the way they practise medicine.

We value people who are dedicated to their work without taking themselves too seriously, and a sense of humour would certainly be appreciated.

If you have particular clinical interests you would like to develop, we'd be very happy to talk about how we could support them. If what you really love is broad General Practice and looking after people and families over many years, we would be equally delighted to hear from you.

There is no need to send us a CV straight away. If this sounds as though it might suit you, please contact Heather or Helen for a confidential conversation and tell us a little about yourself, what you enjoy about General Practice and what you are looking for.

If it sounds as though we might be a good fit for each other, we can go from there.

We aren't simply looking to fill some empty consulting hours. We would like to find another good doctor who enjoys working with us, becomes part of our team and hopefully wants to stay for a long time.

For us, the right person really is more important.