A PASSION for advocating for better health system in rural and regional areas has driven Skye Kinder since before her medical career began.
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It has helped lead her to her current role as a trainee psychiatrist as she pursues a mental health specialty.
Dr Kinder - who is the guest on the new episode of Bendigo Advertiser podcast The Takeaway with Chris Pedler - said she never planned to work in mental health but fell in love with the field due to the connection she can develop with patients.
"I graduated as a doctor and spent years rotating through different specialty areas (and) I actually just fell in love with it (because) you really get to know the people that you're working with," she said.
"The approach we take in mental health is 'what are this person's strengths? How can we help them to use their strengths to overcome other challenges that might be going on in their life?' That's a really rewarding way to work with people.
"There's a lot of opportunity for advocacy, which is a real passion of mine. Advocacy and mental health just go hand in hand.
The coronavirus pandemic, which saw people forced to isolate or lockdown for long periods, saw mental health become an major issue.
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"Lots of people still do refer to it as the shadow pandemic in the wake of COVID-19," Dr Kinder said. "As with all things, if the system was struggling before the pandemic, it was certainly struggling after the pandemic.
"(It's) reflected in the findings from the Royal Commission into Victoria's mental health system. It's a woefully under-funded, under-resourced and, frankly, inadequate system, unfortunately.
"That's not to say that there aren't amazing people trying to reform it. There are and I hope to be one of them. But it's an area that's been neglected for a very long time.
"Now is a moment when perhaps more than ever we really need to be making big changes in this space and particularly for regional rural people. Because anything that's difficult in the city is always much harder in the regions."
Dr Kinder's passion for medicine and rural health advocacy was sparked when she was young and saw her father battled a severe lung condition. He was forced to regularly travel to Melbourne for specialist healthcare.
"There was just this inherent sense of unfairness," she said. "In a big area like Bendigo we should have access to a full suite of all specialties.
"We should be a centre of excellence in our own right - I think we certainly are very much becoming that - but at the time things were much more limited."
From that spark in childhood to becoming a graduated doctor, Dr Kinder has seen a lot of progress in healthcare in regional areas.
"There's a lot of people say progress (in medicine and healthcare) is slow...But I reject that on many levels," she said. "I think what we need sometimes is innovation.
"We've seen with the pandemic, actually that we can fundamentally transform aspects of healthcare if we decide that it's a priority to do so. I think buying into the narrative that progress is slow just disadvantages our community."
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One of the issues regularly faced by regional and rural areas is a shortage of doctors. It is an issue Dr Kinder said has no short term solution.
"One of the things that comes up in conversation when I talk to community members is often this perception that doctors don't want to work in rural areas," she said. "Certainly that was true once upon a time.
In a big area like Bendigo we should have access to a full suite of all specialties.
- Dr Skye Kinder
"There most definitely was a time where people that got into medicine were from the city, wanted to stay in the city, and all of the prestige was in the city.
"That was a contributor to why there was this maldistribution of our workforce and the regions didn't have access to doctors, I think that has genuinely changed.
"I think that now more than ever, we are graduating doctors who genuinely have an interest in rural and regional health - and remote health for that matter."
Dr Kinder said the problem was that newly graduated doctors still need regular training.
She hoped more opportunities to train in regional areas would arise.
"Our training doesn't stop once we graduate medical school," she said. "Even though I'm a fully fledged doctor, I'm still doing my own training to become a specialist.
"The training programs that we have are really complex and convoluted. And some of that's necessary for public safety - you obviously need your doctors to be very well trained."
"We are fortunate to have a growing mental health training program in Bendigo. But some of the opportunities I've wanted to take - I'm doing work with the Victorian Aboriginal health service at the moment - are physically located in Melbourne.
"That tends to be more of a problem and the more that we come up with innovative solutions to fill those gaps, the more that we'll be able to get doctors into the regions."
Dr Kinder said addressing the maldistribution of the rural health workforce is a long-term game.
"It's a long term investment. I think one of the challenges that rural and regional health has had in the past is that political cycles are very short," she said.
The evidence is very clear, the more barriers there are to accessing health care, the more that the people don't reach it.`
- Dr Skye Kinder
"So how do we, as a community, improve the health of our region? How do we make sure that there are long-term strategies, not just strategies that last a particular election cycle or a particular term in office?
"One of the things that I always say is people in rural and regional areas pay taxes just like everyone else and we deserve access to an equitable health care system without all of these barriers."
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Barriers in regional and rural health systems often discourage people from seeking proper medical care.
"The evidence is very clear, the more barriers there are to accessing health care, the more that the people don't reach it," Dr Kinder said.
"What we then see is people presenting later, who might even actually have worse outcomes than if they presented earlier. Ultimately, that person might end up having an illness that even leads to the loss of their life."
Despite being early in her medical career, Dr Kinder is already eager to inspire the next generation of health care workers.
She said she didn't want to see young, aspiring student discouraged from pursuing their passions.
"The narrative that a lot of us get, certainly this was the case for me, is that we're not good enough and we don't deserve to be there," Dr Kinder said. "I've had people explicitly say that to me.
"There's a growing number of young women coming out of Weeroona College Bendigo [where Dr Kinder went to school], and I'm sure coming out about other public schools as well, who are really interested in pursuing health careers of all types.
"I'd love to have this more formal network of mentorship for people from our region who want to go on to pursue health careers because there is so much benefit in being able to speak to someone who's navigated the path already."
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