It Takes Heart
It Takes Heart is an unmissable podcast where healthcare workers share their honest and unique experiences from Australia’s frontline.
Discover real-life stories of passion and purpose, insight and inspiration from people on the inside and tales that are equal parts heart-warming, heart-wrenching and hilarious. It Takes Heart is co-hosted by cmr | Cornerstone Medical Recruitment CEO Samantha Miklos and Head of Talent and Employer Branding Kate Coomber.
It Takes Heart
From Disney to the Outback: Emergency Medicine with Dr Tim Turk
What do Disney cruise ships, rural hospitals, and music festivals have in common? For Dr. Tim Turk, they’ve all been part of his incredible medical journey. In this episode of It Takes Heart, Tim chats with hosts Sam and Kate about how saying “yes” to unique opportunities has led him across continents, specialties, and communities - creating a career rich in purpose, adventure, and impact.
Tim shares how rural medicine offers unparalleled hands-on experience, often accelerating learning and confidence in ways metropolitan placements can’t match. His insights reveal how a values-driven approach - shaped in part by his time with Disney - can turn even the briefest patient interaction into something meaningful.
Tim also reflects on his time as a festival medic, working alongside pill testing teams and witnessing firsthand the powerful shift toward harm reduction. These collaborative efforts not only saved lives but transformed the environment, dramatically reducing hospitalisations and creating safer spaces for young people. It’s a conversation full of heart, humanity, and bold career lessons for every healthcare professional.
It Takes Heart is hosted by cmr CEO Sam Miklos, alongside Head of Talent and Employer Branding, Kate Coomber.
We Care; Music by Waveney Yasso
More about Tim's Organisation of Choice, Rural Doctors Association of Queensland.
Rural Doctors Association of Queensland (RDAQ) is a member-based not-for-profit organisation that provides advocacy and support services to rural doctors. Their aim is to ensure access to quality healthcare for rural and remote Queenslanders.
Get to know cmr better!
Follow @ittakesheartpodcast on Instagram, @cmr | Cornerstone Medical Recruitment on Linked In, @cornerstonemedrec on TikTok and @CornerstoneMedicalRecruitment on Facebook.
Get to know cmr better!
Follow @ittakesheartpodcast on Instagram, @cmr | Cornerstone Medical Recruitment on Linked In, @cornerstonemedrec on TikTok and @CornerstoneMedicalRecruitment on Facebook.
Welcome to it Takes Heart. I'm Kate and I'm Sam, and we can't wait to share more incredible stories of healthcare professionals making an impact across Australia.
Tim Turk:So they're going to go out, they're going to take their drugs, which is fine. If you want to take drugs, take drugs, but if something goes wrong, they always know the medical team is there to help them if needed, and we maintain that non-judgmental we are here to help you. I always remember in Kingaroy we had med students that stayed with us for the entire year and in the first few months they usually would do more than their colleagues would do in the entire year back in a major hospital like we, because we would teach them IVs, sutures, stuff like that within a week or two.
Kate Coomber:We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which we meet who, for centuries, have shared ancient methods of healing and cared for their communities. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.
Sam Miklos:Today we are joined by Dr Tim Turk, who is an active member of our CMR Doctors community. Originally from Canada, tim has a passion for emergency medicine. He began his career would you say that he began his career as an emergency nurse. He was even a paramedic for a brief period. Tim travelled the world as a nurse unit manager on a Disney cruise liner for many years until he met an Aussie girl and eventually has settled in Australia. Now, a rural and remote specialist, tim lives in Queensland with his wife and works a load of jobs.
Sam Miklos:But the highlight maybe but this might change is locating in some rural locations, working as a doctor on the defence base and also working as a medic at various music and community events. Probably that is like a very high-level summary.
Tim Turk:Tim, it's great to have you here. That's sort of the top three jobs, the top three. I can't wait to hear about the others.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, yeah, welcome to, it Takes.
Tim Turk:Heart. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's good to be here, thank you.
Sam Miklos:That's quite a life and a lot of adventure. But can we just talk about Disney for a moment, because I went on a Disney cruise with my family last year for four days, yeah, yeah, how long were you?
Tim Turk:so I worked there for about a bit over five years on a boat, on well, so no, so you did you do four months on, two months off, right, um, and that, you know, was revolving contract. So, whatever the four months happened to be, if that was christmas and new year's, you were on board.
Tim Turk:If that was the middle of summer, slash winter time yeah yeah, so four months straight on the ship, um, and two months off, and then they would usually call me back during the two months for like a week or two at a time, just because I worked hard. So they wanted me on board every so often to like if something happened, if a nurse got sick, they knew they could just give me a ring and I could fly into some random location and hop on board and start smiling the next day, kind of thing.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, but yeah, it was about five years. And is it like working in disney, where smiles always on?
Sam Miklos:oh yeah, music always playing and like what is it? Yeah, what's the best bit about that job? What is the worst thing?
Tim Turk:oh, I mean the best bit, like I mean because it's working on a cruise ship. So you're traveling, you're going all over the like I did. I did the mediterranean, I did the baltic, uh, like multiple places in the mediterranean. I did transatlanticings, a couple of them. I did all around the Caribbean, I did through the Panama Canal, I did the East Coast of the US and I did the Mexican Riviera and just I mean over and over, like every week or every 10 or 11 days, we'd do a cruise, so I'd go back to the same ports over and over again, which meant that you started to learn them more and more and you got to know the nice places to go and you found the good restaurants and the good gelato places and yeah you know, and so that was really fun and but yeah, I mean it's, it is disney.
Tim Turk:So you were like we were technically we worked for a separate contracted company but we worked for disney and and you, so you had to be on all the time. Um, you know, you were, you're smiling, you're special points, and so the two finger points and things like that's an all the. You actually went and did it.
Sam Miklos:I was like what's a point?
Tim Turk:Because if you point with one finger, you can identify a single person Someone might feel pointed out in a crowd, whereas if you're using your whole hand to gesture, or two fingers, it's obvious that you're telling someone where to go or what to do. So we actually did. You actually do three days of it's called Disney university university and you do three days at the parks in florida where they teach you all this stuff, um, and you learn history of disney and you learn like you know care and quality stuff and uh, presentation, and then all the safety stuff of you know how to get in a lifeboat and what to do if the fire alarm sounds and all that kind of good stuff and and um and that kind of kept going on the ship as well, like the training and whatnot.
Tim Turk:Um, which kind of turned into the worst thing too, because you were never not on.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, it must have been exhausting. I felt like overstimulated. I was so happy. I was like I just need to get on for a minute.
Tim Turk:Well, it's fun because you have the background music all the time. You have the music, you know there's people walking around all the time, everyone's smiling and all you know, and most of the people there really do enjoy themselves.
Kate Coomber:They like working there they're having fun.
Tim Turk:But the nurses, the doctors, deck crew, stuff like that. We're all part of the emergency response teams, so you're on 100% of the time. So if there's a medical emergency and it's the middle of the night and you're supposed to be at work the next day, you're getting up and you're running somewhere on the ship to help people. And you might not like. We had someone have a heart attack halfway across the Atlantic one time and you can't go anywhere. You're stuck. So we're looking after him 24 hours a day. So we have an like. The medical centers on the ship are four or five consulting rooms, kind of like an ICU set up, a couple of treatment rooms and things like that.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, like proper, so you can actually manage it.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, but we had to do.
Tim Turk:you know, there's only three nurses and we had to run 24 hour care on this guy, so we ended up doing kind of like 12 on 12 off shifts plus the rest of our work to look after this one woman actually. One person that was really, really sick and I mean you can only do so much, like you couldn't get a helicopter out there because the seas were too rough. So we asked them to speed up, but you know you can't, it's a shit.
Kate Coomber:It's not like a car where you can floor it kind of thing.
Tim Turk:You know it's you know, I think they added, they took about six hours off the transatlantic crossing, which is, you know, impressive, um, but it, you know, it doesn't really change a lot for you. You're still working, you're you're still working pretty hard, um, and and you know, but it was fun, it was great fun. I mean I would. I would go back in a heartbeat, but, um, it's not.
Sam Miklos:You have to know what you're getting into, um can I ask do you like um, if pluto is having an off day, is it like tim? You're on a 12 hours off. Can you be Pluto Like?
Tim Turk:do you sub into that? No, no, no. So the how can I say this?
Sam Miklos:I feel like it's a yes, there's a story there.
Tim Turk:No, so all of the characters and stuff all live on board the ship and they're very strict on their scheduling and stuff to make sure they get enough breaks and enough rest. But everyone has more than one job. You know, I actually met my wife on board the ship.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, because I remember you'd see them on there Like there'd be this place and there'd be that place.
Tim Turk:That's why I asked.
Sam Miklos:Everyone works lots of jobs, yeah, so I mean she did.
Tim Turk:She was actually a lifeguard and she sold the shore excursions. And she sold the shore excursions and she would do the greeting at the theaters at nighttime and then she would do guest info sometimes as well. So everyone did multiple jobs. The only people that didn't do multiple jobs were kind of like the guys who drove the ship and the medical team. Yeah, because we were kind of there just to be doctors and nurses, very specialized yeah.
Tim Turk:I mean we're pretty specialized but we still were. You know you had to go and do the meet and greets. We were officers, so we had to go do meet and greet officer things. We had to go do stuff in the restaurant. Sometimes we do tours, we do yeah.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, wow, yeah. Do you hear Disney songs now and just hide?
Sam Miklos:Well, I've got two four-year-olds so I hear Disney songs a lot. You're deep in Disney or right back there. Well.
Tim Turk:I don't mind it. After a while you just kind of get used to it. You know, I can sing along with a lot of it just as well. And you know, I think the best part was also I was there when Disney took over Marvel as well. Yeah, so we got to watch all the movies the day before they came out. Yeah, because they would show them to the staff and the crew the day before. They would set up a theater just for crew and we'd have like popcorns and beverages and stuff.
Kate Coomber:Oh yeah, like it was a full on premiere.
Tim Turk:but we could dress down, we could have fun and we were watching a movie like easily 48 hours before the rest of the world would see the movie.
Tim Turk:because we need to be able to talk about it, we need to be able to tell people like, oh, you really want to go see it and don't leave after this and you really can't you're not going to believe what happens to this character and yeah, we had to talk everything up on the ship and because you're stuck there and you know, yeah, so premieres at sea and with the ears, with ears, of course.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, so healthcare staff with high, high levels customer service that's going to then work for you in your future life?
Sam Miklos:Yeah, because that is what. When you said you've got to know what you're getting into, like that would be part of it too, yeah.
Tim Turk:And that's actually probably the part of it that's followed me through most of my career is the patient is their guest. You know we don't call them passengers, they're guests. They are there to be treated, they're there to be helped, but you know they're having a bad day and you need to do everything you possibly can to make them feel better about themselves. And you need to talk to them and you talk to their family. You need to deal with everything. You have to be nice to everybody.
Sam Miklos:You have to smile, you have to give them an experience.
Tim Turk:You have to help them be happy again. And that just kind of continues. And it's that sort of idea of if it takes you two extra seconds or five minutes to do something that will make someone's day significantly better, just do it. You know like little things like that is what we were just and that was expected on the ship. But then when you start doing it in kind of real life, everyone's just kind of looking at you like why are you doing?
Tim Turk:that that must have been yeah, it doesn't hurt you, it doesn't hurt you.
Kate Coomber:It doesn't stop me from doing anything. Why are you?
Tim Turk:smiling.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, like, why are you smiling?
Tim Turk:at you for five minutes, it's like because they needed to rant to somebody for five minutes. And now that they're done ranting, they're calm and we can talk to we can actually so.
Kate Coomber:So take us back. Like you were a nurse, a paramedic, now a doctor, how is that even possible?
Sam Miklos:because I was expecting you to walk in here and be really old like to have gone through all of these. Trust me, I feel like a lot of study, like yeah yeah. How does that all come together?
Tim Turk:So left high school obviously at like 18, you know when everyone else does and went straight into nursing school, which is a four years of bachelor of science degree in nursing.
Kate Coomber:In Canada, In Canada yeah.
Tim Turk:So went to McMaster in Hamilton, got my degree, started working in critical care and ED Actually did a lot of ED psychiatry work just because it was fun and interesting and no one else wanted the job. So I got it right out of school, which is really rare, really enjoyed it but thought I kind of didn't want to do. Some of the patient care stuff in the hospitals was getting a little frustrating because you know you spent more time documenting than actually treating people and that was getting frustrating. So I went. I just was, like on a whim, applied to paramedic school, um, and got in um, and I don't know why I got in. I still don't actually know why I got in because apparently there was a wait list that year and it's very competitive, it's and that's it.
Tim Turk:and I tell people like I literally just applied for it on a whim on a night shift and filled out the paperwork and filled out the like. I had to write an essay and there's like, hilarious, it was one of those nights where there's like two patients in the ED and both of them were asleep and I'm like, oh, I'm just going to sit here and write a paper, you know, and I sat down and wrote everything and submitted it and got in how long had you been nursing at that point?
Sam Miklos:Eight months maybe. Do you wonder if the nursing component fast-tracked you a little bit?
Tim Turk:Probably not, not in Canada at least it's it's very they're very separated degrees, uh. So but you know, so got in, went straight back into school, basically went uh did two years paramedics, uh to add on to that and, um, really, really enjoyed being a paramedic and it was very much my kind of medicine and I enjoyed doing the work did you keep the nursing?
Tim Turk:yeah, actually when I was in school I would work as a nurse yeah um, which will come back when I become a doctor too. Yes, but yes. But then I so I became a paramedic and enjoyed it, loved it, had a lot of fun. But also, this is Canada. I hated dealing with people on the side of the road when it's minus 30 and there's no light, and you know people are driving past too fast on a snowy road and you're just like. You know, I really like heating and fluorescent lights. This is this is a little much, so all right, whatever, what can I do differently? And that's when, um, I randomly, you know, I looked at cruise ships and I didn't even know that disney had a cruise line at that point.
Tim Turk:Um, I knew disney existed because you don't, unless you've got kids yeah, I didn't until seeking out the disney cruise so I I actually applied to a few other cruise lines and then someone kind of commented like, oh, apply to this company too, they do Disney. I was like, disney has cruise ships Cool, all right. Applied and they called me and I was like, yeah, you know, did an interview on the phone and, you know, talked to them and did some clinical scenarios with their nurse practitioner that they had working for them, and they were like, okay, we'd be really happy, but when can you start? I'm like, well, I mean, when do you need me? And they're like well, what about next week? And this is like Monday. And they needed me on board the ship Tuesday, the next week.
Sam Miklos:I was like it's like a theme.
Tim Turk:Yeah.
Kate Coomber:You've got to do all of that training.
Tim Turk:Then that was the thing is like, so can you do it? And I'm like, well sure, I realized at that point, I mean, that's how much you're going to pay me, kind of thing.
Kate Coomber:But I was like I guess why not.
Tim Turk:And they're like, OK, well, so we're going to send you the flight details for your flight out on Wednesday. You're going to come to Florida and then you're going to get had to like pull up. This is, I mean, I'm old, so this is like pre-Google Maps.
Tim Turk:I have a few questions I had to pull up a map and be like, okay, where am I going? Oh, I'm going there. And then the crew okay, great, Whatever Trust it. Just what's the worst that could happen is kind of how I lived. You know, I spent four nights in the resorts in Disney and because you work for them, you got free access to the parks. So we would do class for usually about four or five hours a day and then they would just kind of dismiss us and there's buses, like there's free buses in Disney.
Tim Turk:So we'd just get on a bus and be like which park do we want to go to today? It's like oh, let's go to the Animal Kingdom today, why not? Like it's.
Kate Coomber:It's all free, we don't care.
Tim Turk:Let's go check it out. So we went and saw three of the major parks in those three days, kind of thing We'd go to downtown Disney at nighttime and just have fun, learn a lot Like learned a lot, but just had a lot of fun too and then hopped on the ship.
Tim Turk:And how did you then become a doctor? So the last contract I did for Disney. So when I started working for Disney they only had two cruise ships. Now they have five and almost six. I think I think the sixth one's coming out next year, but I don't know anymore. I was the first crew when they so they had these two ships for about 10 years and then they were like all right, we need to expand, we're doing really well, we need to expand. So they bought two new ones. They built two new ones. You don't buy a cruise ship.
Sam Miklos:It's so. They can't go to a dealership, can't go to a dealership.
Tim Turk:So they had to, you know, maybe after COVID, well it's actually anyway, but they so they were building two new ships and the first one to come out was the Disney Dream. And I went to Bremerhaven in Germany and I was the first crew, I was part of the first crew that brought it over to North America to start working again in the Caribbean. And that was my last contract and I kind of was getting a little bit bored doing nursing, liked it, I was enjoying it. But I was just like, oh you know, should I be a nurse practitioner? Should I just do a critical care certificate? Like, what should I do next? And I was in the US at this point, like I'd basically been living in the US for six years at this point, five years at this point. And I just went like, well, I'll just apply to med school.
Sam Miklos:Again like why not, why not, why not?
Kate Coomber:Actually it was a day.
Tim Turk:But it was hilarious because, you know like, people asked me like well, what were you doing? I was like, well, I was actually sitting on the filling out a med school application, just chilling on a cruise ship filling out a med school application, and it was the same kind of thing. I got a call a few weeks later. They did an interview and they're like hey, do you want to join us? I'm like I guess I'm going to go be a doctor now.
Kate Coomber:So you're very relaxed about how these things have come about, but clearly you're highly intelligent and must have very good application. Very good application, but also the I guess how well you did at university and things like that. There must have been some, you know.
Tim Turk:I was a solid B student. I was never. I was not even remotely the smartest person in my class, by any means. I was sixth in my med school class, so close to fifth.
Sam Miklos:But I was sixth Top ten.
Kate Coomber:Yeah well, fifth, but I was sick, but you know, like yeah, well, that's what.
Sam Miklos:I tell people I'm in top 10. But I can't say top five, it's really annoying, but you know, and that's, that's fine.
Tim Turk:You know, and I, you know, I realized in med school like I really actually have to study this stuff, like this is really important. Now, you know, I'm realized because I had the background of the nursing, I had the background of the paramedic. I could see the you know these doctors that were making the decisions that I always just rolled my eyes at and thought they were being silly. They actually really were making big, big decisions, like if you make the wrong choice, really bad things can happen. So I'm like I really should study hard for this kind of thing. So I studied really hard in med school. I did well, but no nursing and paramedic. I was a B-ish student, you know, 80s-ish kind of student.
Sam Miklos:Did you then go into emergency medicine, like as soon as you graduated medical school? Like there seems to have been that theme, but then, when I said it earlier, you're like what?
Tim Turk:No, so I like ED, don't get me wrong no-transcript. I'd done all the USMLE testing. I had all my American stuff done.
Kate Coomber:Yeah.
Tim Turk:Came over to Australia and they went you don't qualify, yeah. I was like, why not? And they're like well, you haven't mean these AMC exams that you guys use the USMLE to like base your questions off of. I'm like you just realized I finished all of those exams. They're like, yeah, no, they don't count. All right, fair enough. When can I write those exams? Oh, the next one's in six months. Okay, what am I going to do for six months?
Tim Turk:Well, it turned out my nursing license transferred and they were. Opera was like do you want to be a nurse Like I?
Sam Miklos:mean so?
Tim Turk:this is great. I'm like that's totally fine.
Kate Coomber:Are there nursing jobs here? Well, that was my next question and I was like well, is it hard?
Tim Turk:Like I'm talking to Opera at this point and you know, like I didn't know anything about it.
Tim Turk:I was like whatever, I'll just ask these people Is it hard to find nursing jobs? And I'm like was that a good laugh or bad? I'm not going to ask. Like your future is my future is in your hands. I'm not going to insult you. Okay, cool, cool, great cool. Yeah, I'll take my nurse's license. That's fine. And they're like okay, send us these two pieces of paper. And I sent them over and I became a nurse. So I was actually Dr Timothy RN on my nurse's and my medical license at the same time, because one hadn't expired my nurse's license hadn't expired yet. So people would look me up and they're like are you a doctor or a nurse? I'm like well, according to Opera, I'm actually both right now. But I worked in Darwin, for I basically studied for the AMC exams while I worked up in Darwin and then we moved to Queensland and I did all the clinical exams and stuff and then I started internship in Queensland.
Kate Coomber:How long did that take? So?
Tim Turk:the AMC wasn't for six months. Like how long does? It actually take you to study and prepare, so I just basically, I took the very first time so you actually can go on a wait list Again, this sort of classic last minute like what are you doing next week, so they.
Tim Turk:So I just, but I sort of just finished med school so I was really in a study kind of mode, so I just grabbed all the study material for the amc um and I just started studying for it and I just kept studying, basically, and kept reading and kept doing all the work and kept keeping up on stuff and working um did a lot of night shifts, because that's the best time to study um and uh became a. So how did how did that end up mapping? So I think I got a call middle of the week, one week that you know there were two options you could either come to adelaide from darwin to adelaide or you could do perth um, and the flights from darwin to adelaide were cheaper. So I said, okay, sure, I'll do adelaide. Well, when is that? Tesla? It's on wednesday or thursday, the week week. No worries, I'll see you there. So I think I had to wait about four months. And then you have to do a clinical exam too. It's like an OSCE style clinical exam, which is that's fine, I get it.
Tim Turk:You want to make sure people can speak English and do clinical work.
Kate Coomber:And actually treat.
Sam Miklos:Actually talk to somebody and stuff like that.
Tim Turk:I get it and and that was the same thing. It was like, oh, when's the next one? I was eight months from now. Okay, was there a wait list for this one too? Absolutely great, awesome on the way you know, and I just kept working, kept working on the cancellation list.
Kate Coomber:I'll be ready tomorrow.
Tim Turk:Pretty much, and it was, and all of them are on weekends, they're all saturdays and sundays, and you get a call on a wednesday, or wednesday or thursday um, can you be in melbourne? Because they were at point. They were all done in person in Melbourne, or McCann's I think, somewhere, but Melbourne was the main one. And I got a call and they're like hey, you need to be in Melbourne for your Sunday morning test. No problem, Hop on a plane, pop over to Melbourne, grab a you know backpackers accommodation for two days, keep studying. Did the test?
Kate Coomber:You find out a month later like I mean, they probably know, at the end of the day, that you passed or not.
Tim Turk:But you find out a month later that you passed and it was like cool, now I'm a doctor in this country too, so and that was, and then I just, you know, applied for internships and got an internship in Queensland.
Tim Turk:Yeah and know applied for internships and got an internship in Queensland, yeah, and I liked. I mean, I liked being a doctor, but I actually really preferred internal medicine, which is kind of like the doctor that treats everything, that isn't a specialty. So, if you know and I've always liked rural medicine, I always liked the country and I sort of was like, well, how can I put those two things together? And that was when I found out about Akram, which is Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine. I was like, oh okay, I'll do that, sure, no problem, kind of thing. And that was the same kind of idea. Just, you know, during internship I applied for it and they're like oh well, if you want to join us, that's no problem, but you'll have to go to Kingar. I started just being a doctor in kingroy and I did most of my training through kingroy yeah kingroy yeah do you?
Sam Miklos:um, you know, now are you locuming in and out around queensland. Like, how does then the the locum piece, rural and remote work for you now?
Tim Turk:um, so I do so three days a week. I work for the defense. Uh, so I've worked for a separate company again.
Kate Coomber:I do a lot of contracts. I've realized I don't actually work for people, but um, I do so not one for commitment.
Sam Miklos:Hang in there, shannon.
Tim Turk:Oh, she's very used to this by now it's kind of funny um, but I so I do three days a week. I work at the base and that's just a lot of GP work and just keeping them going. And there's some emergencies. You know they break arms and stuff like that so you treat that. And then the rest of the week I sort of just find interesting contracts and do fun things and a lot of the a lot of that is emergency rural work, because most hospitals in rural areas only have an emergency room. They'll have a ward but the ED doctor is the one covering it. So I just pop out there and go and work in emergency rooms and I'll go I mean, I'll pretty much go anywhere, not a huge tropics fan just because of the humidity. But you know I do South Australia. I've done New South Wales a fair bit, done some stuff, and I do Queensland Health as well. I locum with Queensland Health as well.
Kate Coomber:So, yeah, Go on. No, no. I was going to say can you maybe paint a picture of some of those rural hospitals that you go to? Like what's this like? Because when people think that they're going to go to a rural hospital, like what is it?
Sam Miklos:And I think that Tim had said that, like there was a doing a stint in rural is like a form of punishment. There's that perception that people think it's punishment. Yeah, absolutely, did I read?
Tim Turk:that Med students usually look at the rural placements as punishment until about week two, when they get there and they realize that you have to make it something.
Kate Coomber:So why is that what people say?
Tim Turk:They think they're being punished because they're not in a city anymore. They're being taken away from the city. They're being sent to this location that you can't even pronounce.
Kate Coomber:It's like not desirable. Yeah, it's a not desirable location.
Tim Turk:Nothing to do, being at the PA is where everyone wants to be, or being at. You know rvwh and and you know the raw down in adelaide, like that's where everyone you know. You want to be in the big hospital, you know, and if you're in a big hospital there's a senior doctor, there's three registrars, there's four juniors, there's someone who knows more than you do well, but it's not even that it's.
Sam Miklos:You never see a patient I was just about to say you never do anything. Yeah, you know you.
Tim Turk:You're the seventh person in the room and if you're lucky and like me and you're tall, you can at least see what's going on at the front. But usually you're stuck at the wall and you can't and you can listen you don't really get a lot out of listening and a lot of physical exam stuff. It's like oh, I wonder what he's doing. I can't see it, but I'm gonna stand back here and play on tiktok or something like that. You know rural medicine. You show up on day one, we kind of look at you and you're like well, what can you do? And they're like what do you want me to do? It's like well, there's a patient in right bed. Three go see him. Go like, go ask them what's wrong with them. But I've never done that before.
Kate Coomber:It's like well, yeah, wow, gotta do it at some point. So now's again.
Tim Turk:You know and we're rural medicine rural doctors in general are astoundingly supportive because we know that a lot of people that come out there are not used to it they're not used to this, like they're not used to this, like just go work, like well, what if they have a cardiac problem?
Tim Turk:It's like well, I guess you get to play cardiologist today. You know what if they have a respiratory problem? It's like well, do you remember what a pulmonary function curve looks like? I hope you do, because you're going to have to create one now, like you have. You know, and it's. And so we teach the med students so much more and they get so much more thrilling once you get past the initial shock, and you know it's.
Tim Turk:I always remember in kingroy we had med students that stayed with us for the entire year and in the first few months they usually would do more than their colleagues would do in the entire year back in a major hospital like we, because we would teach them ivs, sutures, stuff like that within a week or two, and that was just expectation. After that, like, oh, there's a guy with a laceration over there, just can you go suture it up for me? Yeah, okay, you know. And the concept of a med student doing your sutures for a lot of people in the rural community is like, yeah, okay, fine. In a city, oh, no, the med student's watching and it's a doctor doing it. It's like no, out here there's only one doctor and the med student.
Sam Miklos:So you're, you're getting a med student, but at the end of that year, how did the med students feel?
Tim Turk:oh they, they are. They rave about it. I mean, usually halfway through the year they're already raving about it and telling all the med students that are think they're being punished by being sent there the next year, like you are not being punished, like let me tell you all the things that you're going to get when you're out here and how much better it is, and and and, and.
Tim Turk:Yeah, I mean, and we and we look after them, we, we'd take them out, we'd make sure they had fun, we'd, you know, tell them all the places to go and all the rural like the things to go see in the area and all the fun stuff to do. But junior doctors have the same attitude. You know they're being punished because they're being sent out to a rural location and they don't understand that they're going to get so much experience and so much learning when they're there.
Kate Coomber:So maybe can you talk us through or share a story where you feel you get that exposure, or you can. It sounds like you can really see that direct impact on that community that you're working in, versus all the various people in the room in a Metro hospital.
Tim Turk:I mean a lot of the time in the rural. The biggest thing is you see the patients, you see them the next day, you see them a week later. You, you can, honestly, you know you sometimes talk to them in public, like I mean, shannon loves telling a story about people. That would stop me at bullies like we could never just go grocery shopping. I had to talk to 10 people every time I went to the store because I was like oh that's the doctor who treated me in the ed lesson.
Tim Turk:Oh, my kid is doing so much better.
Kate Coomber:Thank you for seeing us at two o'clock in the morning when you know, I have my bags under my eyes were as big as my eyes kind of thing, and I was like, yeah, no, well, that's what we're here for, kind of thing, you know.
Tim Turk:Um, I mean you. You always, you always know you're making an impact in a rural community and then, and they'll tell you, you know, like they, you, you get the feedback almost immediately whether you're doing a good job or not. And you know like, I ruined a woman's wedding once. So it was, you know it was, it was the sort of classic.
Tim Turk:I was just about to finish, so it must've been just around six o'clock and 20 odd ish year old woman came into the ED, told to come there by the gym that she was working out at. And she was working out at and she was trying to get in shape for a wedding. It's good for her, fine, great, no worries. And both of her arms were weak suddenly and everyone was just like she just worked out too hard. I was like, well, there's a few other reasons why your arms could both suddenly become objectively weak, like I'm like lift your arm up, she can't. I'm like that's not normal. Like, even if you do a lot of curls, you can still lift your arm up after this kind of thing, you know all right, well, I'm gonna put a neck collar on you real quick and then we're gonna run you through a ct scanner.
Tim Turk:And she had a vertebral artery dissection, um, so I, I got to, I got to. You know, this is this is probably a wednesday, knowing my luck, um, and her wedding was that weekend, um, and I was like so ever been in a helicopter before, because it was actually one of the fun ones. We, you know, again, we had the CT locally, which is amazing, like rural hospitals.
Sam Miklos:I was just going to say. Is that common to?
Kate Coomber:be able to do a CT ride, and what would have the plan been if you didn't?
Tim Turk:Oh, she 100% would have gotten a helicopter ride, no matter what.
Kate Coomber:She needed imaging.
Tim Turk:Like percent, would have gotten a helicopter ride, no matter what she needed. Imaging, like I, just the spidey senses were going off on this one kind of thing, but it just something wasn't right and I, I, so we were really lucky. Where I was working, we had actually just got a ct. We just, the king roy hospital had a massive redevelopment while I worked there. We got a brand new hospital with a ct scanner. Um, so we went from a little teeny hospital to this beautiful, beautiful, brand new building, brand new ED with like double the capacity and a CT that we had access to 24 hours a day. It was unbelievably nice. So we could call in the radiographer who was, you know, my friend who lived at the farm up the road and he's like hey, remember how you were eating dinner, I'm really sorry.
Tim Turk:And he, you know, came in and did it and we, you know, you, just walk into the room Again. It was this one-on-one medicine, or actually fun medicine, where you could go, follow the patient and instead of just like whatever, order it and walk away, kind of thing. I followed her in and watched the scan come up on the screen and even I'm looking at it going that's not right. I'm not a radiologist by any means, but I could see that something was very wrong. And so I started making all the phone calls and everyone wanted the official report. Uh, they wouldn't believe me.
Kate Coomber:um, because if they're going to organize yeah, because they were like well, if you're going to organize helicopter, we need the official report.
Tim Turk:I'm like no, no, trust me on this one, like you, just start. Start the process like oh fine, we'll do it, but we don't believe you kind of thing, yeah and I got the urgent phone call from the imaging guy the readers saying you need to put this person in a back collar and a collar and do this, and they need a helicopter. I'm like yeah, I know, we've already organized it and they're like oh well, who read the scan? I'm like I did. Oh, are you a radiologist?
Kate Coomber:No. I'm just a rural doctor, it's what we do.
Tim Turk:And then I got to call everyone back and say, hey, remember, I said I was right. Turns out I was right, but yeah. So she got flown out and had vascular surgery and was in a brace for three or four days and missed her wedding Because I felt really bad.
Sam Miklos:I got a thank you card. Did you get to go to the next one?
Tim Turk:No.
Kate Coomber:I did not get an invite.
Tim Turk:I probably was on everyone's bad list but, I did get a thank you card afterwards, like you know. Yes, I know you ruined my wedding, but thank you for, you know, not letting me die well saving my yes, yeah, yeah, because so that was.
Tim Turk:That was like, yeah, it's a plus minus card. I called them. Yeah, um, but you know you get. You get good outcomes a lot of the time in rural medicine and because you get to treat everything, you're not just referring everybody off, you're not just seeing somebody going oh, you have a heart problem, there's a cardiologist over there that'll see you now. And going back to the computer and it's like no, you have to do everything, which is great, it keeps your brain going and it's so much more fun. And you know, emergency medicine is great and you get to do a lot of interesting things in it.
Tim Turk:But actually proper rural ED medicine where you're just treating everything and you know and you don't refer because you can't until it's really outside of our scope, um, and you just treat them so yeah, yeah I like it.
Kate Coomber:It's good fun and so then you also work in events that sounds very oh sorry, you're in events I live in queensland, medical work, medical Medical work.
Tim Turk:Medical work that's an interesting segue Concerts.
Kate Coomber:you know doing again that emergency response and various things. Is that what you do?
Tim Turk:Yeah, kind of so. Yeah, so I work for a company called Hess Paramedicine and we do event medicine and events. So like the first aid tents at events and things like that.
Kate Coomber:And did that come about just because?
Tim Turk:you wanted tickets to a concert.
Kate Coomber:You know again you want to go back to that more paramedic? No, not treating under the flu reliance.
Tim Turk:So it was. It was a. I think I was in PGY two or three, I was just a junior doctor and I called up a company that did medical retrievals and they were just like well, do you want to? Like? Like? I just called them and said like, can I, can I work for you, can I do like road transfers or something Like I just needed extra money or something like that. I'm like, whatever it could be fun. Like well, we don't, we don't hire juniors. I'm like, fair enough, but what? But what are you doing this weekend? Kind of thing.
Kate Coomber:And it was very standard job offer for. Well, what are you doing? I'm like. Well, it depends on what you want me for.
Tim Turk:And they're like well, queensland Raceway has a car racing event on this weekend and they need a doctor. Sure, where do I go? And they're like well, google Queensland Raceway and just show up there and we'll give you a shirt and we'll put you in the response car and all that kind of stuff. I'm like all right, great. So I started doing that and I did that on and off for years.
Sam Miklos:For just Queensland Raceway.
Tim Turk:So Queensland Raceway and Lakeside Raceway.
Sam Miklos:Oh my God, my husband will be listening. I was about to say he races and.
Tim Turk:Well, so it's in the last couple of years they've they've changed hands. Different people own the two tracks now, so I only work at one of them now. But yeah, we did I would. I never did supercars, because supercars has their own doctors and medical teams and stuff like that, but we did the Shannon's racing weekends and we did all of the like every race weekend. So it was like I would be there Saturday and Sunday and there would be sort of practice and qualifying on the Saturday and then start of the racing and a lot of racing on the Sunday and every so it was very quick, you know the races were only sort of 20 laps or 10, 15, 20 laps, you know maybe half-hour races at the most, and then so we'd do two an hour Like you'd just be pushing people through going, going, going, going and many, many different kinds of cars and everything from like little teeny Hyundai. So what are they called? Again, excels, I think.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, excel, hyundai Excels. I'd love to help you out there, yeah.
Sam Miklos:It's like I'm talking about my husband drives, but I'm like, I'm really like it just looked like a coffin on wheels.
Tim Turk:And then everything up to like big, fancy, open-wheeled race cars and stuff would be there and and proper teams with proper trucks, driving high-end porsches and you know fun things like that, and you just half the time I'd be sitting there just reading magazines waiting for something interesting cars, oh, the cars are amazing like, yeah, yeah, I love it.
Sam Miklos:I really love it to be part of that.
Tim Turk:It was great fun for me because I got to poke around in race cars and I learned all sorts of stuff about race cars.
Tim Turk:So now it's really interesting because it's like I know how to take off Hans devices and things. You know things that you'd never really know about. But you also know all the questions to ask too. It's like that's probably the most interesting thing, because people will come in from a racetrack into an emergency room and I know all the questions to ask. It's like, okay, what kind of car were you in? What kind of safety equipment did you have on? Was it this, this, this or this? How was it set up? Where did you get out? Did you crawl out? Did this happen? You know, and they're sort of looking at you going like, how does this random doctor know all of these? You know I was like I know things.
Sam Miklos:You're like I'm in this way they're like it was.
Tim Turk:I'll walk you over there. That's the other thing you're supposed to do at Disney.
Tim Turk:You don't tell someone to walk if you can take them there. Oh yeah, but yeah, so that turned into again. What are you doing? This weekend? There was a concert. They needed a doctor. There's rules in Queensland about once you get over a certain number of a thousand, a couple thousand people or something like that, you can't just have paramedics, you need a doctor there. Um, and it's like just numbers based and it's also it's numbers and distance from facility based as well. So if you're in downtown Brisbane, you need thousands of people. So, like at the showgrounds here, I did, um, oh, what was that heavy metal concert called? Uh, I can't remember the name of them. They have such funny names that.
Kate Coomber:I just slip my mind all the time.
Tim Turk:But they had like five or 6,000 people at that concert so they needed a doctor. So I, you know, I did that concert. But I, you know, did my first concert with them and I liked it and they were just like, well, we actually have this three night event going on in the bush and it was all electronic dance, music kind of stuff and I'm like could be fun. So popped out there and lived in a caravan for three days and did all that. But you know, you don't just do medicine at those, you're doing public health, you're doing public safety, stuff You're doing. I kept Band-Aids in my pocket all the time because people wore silly shoes.
Tim Turk:And you know they get roosters on day two and you know you're treating everything, everything. And then you know there's some drugs. Drugs and alcohol, of course, are going to be a problem no matter what you do. But a lot of it was. You know people hurting themselves, people slipping and falling, people getting cold, people getting too hot. You know if you're dancing and it's 35 and you're, you know, like the dance floors were. You can be anywhere from five to 15 degrees warmer than the ambient air.
Kate Coomber:Like if you pack that many people together you.
Tim Turk:Just they heat up so it can be a cool night and I can be wearing a jacket and people will come in hyperthermic like like in heat stroke, because they were dancing and they were just stuck in this 40 degree bouncing around.
Tim Turk:Loving them, loving their lives having a great time, but you know it's now you need an IV, and our goal was to never transport. I mean, that's not saying we didn't like we sent people to the hospital on a regular basis, but we really tried everything we could to keep people at the events. So give them IV fluids, give them medications, put them in an air-conditioned tent or just put fans on them, throw ice packs on them, cool them off, treat whatever's going on and then send them back out. Go have fun.
Sam Miklos:They've paid a lot of money to be there, so yeah, do you choose the concerts that you go to like? Are you like? Oh, oasis is coming.
Tim Turk:I mean, or is it more just like hey, tim, what are you doing this weekend? I'll sometimes look up, so I usually get the offer because, like we're, we're booking out concerts like later in 2025. We know 2026 stuff, not already, but you know like 2025 concerts. They book up but we don't necessarily, like you, look up who's supposed to be playing but you don't even necessarily know who's going to be there. So, like CMC, when we signed up for it, or when I was told that I was going to be working at it, which I was like awesome.
Kate Coomber:This is the country music, the country music concert in Willowbank.
Tim Turk:Actually out in Queensland Raceway they were just like, oh, you want to go. I'm like, yeah, they haven't announced it on the website. I'm like, well, this will be a luck of the draw kind of thing. It turned out it was like people I actually really like listening to.
Kate Coomber:So I was like, oh great, that must be a bonus.
Tim Turk:Oh, it's going to be such a good time, is the?
Sam Miklos:tent well positioned, so you kind of get it Not even remotely.
Tim Turk:I am going to requisition one of the four by four buggies and I'm going to drive myself out. But, you know again, it's kind of like working on the ship. You're there to work, it's great to be able to listen to it, but I have a radio, I'm wearing a uniform, it's very definitive that I'm not there to have fun and, yeah, you can get called on to do all sorts of fun things anytime.
Sam Miklos:So yeah, what about the? You were involved in the pill testing. Yeah, tell us a bit about that.
Tim Turk:So that was so. There's a festival called Rabbits Eat Lettuce. Like I said, funny fun names.
Sam Miklos:I feel so old right now. I was going to say you were there.
Tim Turk:Rabbits Eat Lettuce Festival. Yeah, and they had an unfortunate. They had two deaths at one of their festivals. This is years pre-COVID at this point now, 28. I want to say 2018, but I don't think that's right. They had two deaths and they were completely unavoidable. They were overdoses. They were two people found in their tent on packout day.
Tim Turk:You know obviously had taken something the night before and just fallen asleep and not woken up, which you know horrible, you know it doesn't make it better, but, you know, completely unavoidable. But there the organizers for the festival were obviously devastated by this and they wanted to make a difference. They wanted to do something unique and this was when Pill Testing Australia the company was working in Canberra and they were trying to get pill testing legalized across the country, and we kind of went like, well, this is a good idea. And they went well, this is a good idea. And Pill Testing Australia was like, yeah, we'll show up, could be fun. And so we were the first festival in Queensland to have pill testing on site. So it's pill and substance testing officially, I think, is what it's called but yeah, so people could come in.
Sam Miklos:How does it work? I was just about to say please tell me how this works. Yeah, and because do?
Kate Coomber:people you know. I imagine there's a fear component of if you're in there doing something you know you shouldn't be Well so that was the fun thing because the so we had to.
Tim Turk:getting it organized was really difficult because Queensland Ambulance Service was sort of on side with it but they didn't want anything to do with it. It was like fair, that's fine. You know, the Queensland government was 50-50. They couldn't decide whether they liked the idea. At the time they couldn't. The new government now hates it, but at the time the government couldn't decide whether they liked it or not. They were were because they didn't want to seem like they were supporting illegal things.
Kate Coomber:You can understand.
Tim Turk:Oh, I get it. But you know, we let people smoke, we let people drink. We know that they're going to do too much, we know that they're going to do dumb things. So we, like you, know you can. You can either put your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen or you can help. So we sort of tried to get everyone on site. Queensland police, hilariously enough, were 100% on board with it. They thought it was a great idea because they hate dealing with drugs.
Tim Turk:They don't want to arrest people. They don't want to deal with it. They don't want to have a guy who's high as a kite, you know, spitting on people walking by. They don't want to deal with that.
Sam Miklos:So they were just like yeah.
Tim Turk:And so there are police at all these festivals they want. They literally wander around in uniforms, you know, watching for illegal things, with people smoking cannabis right next to them. Sometimes it's really funny to watch. But they just basically said where are you doing? Oh right, there, okay, we just won't go there. We'll avoid that area as much as we possibly can. Now it's hilarious. It was right next to where all the food was, so they kind of walked by every so often but they sort of actively averted their gaze.
Tim Turk:They didn't look at the people going in there. They tried to make it as comforting as possible and pill testing in Australia is really good. You come in, it's a zero judgment, Like we know that you are bringing us a substance and you can tell us what you think that substance is.
Kate Coomber:And is that all doctors, that they're coming?
Tim Turk:no, so it's all chemists, yeah, um, so it's all. There is doctors running it, um, like there's doctors there and and you know we had to be like we, we met them and we were very much on board and every very, very good communication between us, our group and their group, um, and they had chemists and proper spectrometry equipment and stuff like that and they would just test the substance. So they didn't, they needed minute amounts. So you took a pill in there. They just kind of like take a little teeny scraping of it. Basically, yeah, throw it on a slide thing. I'm not a chemist, yeah, and the computer would tell you what was in the pill and it would tell you concentrations.
Tim Turk:And it would tell you what it was and it would tell you what else was in there as well. And it was unbelievable what they found, like people that thought they were getting MDMA, like ec, like Valium, people that thought they were getting like magic mushrooms and literally were getting ecstasy or like total drug reversals, like pills that had cocaine in them, that they they weren't buying. This Like this is not what they wanted. They wanted ecstasy and they were getting cocaine.
Sam Miklos:Did they someone's come to you and gone. I thought I was getting this and I've got that. Did they often go?
Tim Turk:I don't want that Regularly, yeah, so they had a I mean, they call it an amnesty box. It was basically a throwout box and that was taken back to one of the universities and they would like full on analyze everything that they got in those things to like, give a, you know, a detailed information sheet of like everything that's being helpful to so many things apart from just the you know preventative measures on the day but the information then that that can gather and provide to
Tim Turk:hospitals or the police, or so much so yeah, we we used I mean so we we had two really like. So we we went from sending, on average, 10 to 15 people every festival weekend to the hospital with drugs to none that weekend. Um, like not a single. We had people affected by drugs that we were treating but none of them were sick enough that or unknown enough that we had to send them to the hospital. We just kept them.
Kate Coomber:We were able to treat them all on site, and I guess the fact you were there means that they might be more forthcoming to come and get treatment when they needed, as well, rather than waiting, I'll come back to that in a second.
Tim Turk:People taking drugs are smart. Everyone thinks they're dumb, but they're actually very smart. But the thing that a lot of these people are told is they were handing over a pill and a typical dose of ecstasy is somewhere between 60 to 100 milligrams. So 80 milligrams, let's say. So your one tablet. You think it's going to have 80 milligrams in it and it could have 360.
Kate Coomber:Wow.
Tim Turk:And so if you took that, not knowing this, like again before pill testing, before the concentration gradients were known, you could take it and you would be just seriously in trouble, like I would be putting multiple IVs and giving drugs and probably sending that person to the hospital.
Tim Turk:Pill testing Australia would advise them crack it in half, crack it in quarters. We know you're going to take this, so do it safely. So we just stopped getting overdoses. And when we did get overdoses we would go through their stuff because it's like nothing personal dude, but you're unconscious, I need to know what's going on. And we'd find baggies. We'd find pill remnants, we'd find the powder in a bag. We could take it over to pill testing australia and say I have an unconscious person next door. Can you test this right now? We? They dump us to the front of the line, test it and immediately tell us what it was. So we would know instantly.
Tim Turk:So you know what you're dealing with, we know instantly what it is so it's like great, I'm going to run back door, next door now and I'm just going to give all the right antidotes. Like if I can, I can fix it, or at least I know exactly what I'm dealing with.
Tim Turk:And if they're in trouble or one of their friends is in trouble, they will bring them to us and and we, we are very non-judgmental about their I mean some. I'm not going to say non-judgmental. We sometimes are a little bit judgy when it's like you know, you haven't drank, you haven't had any water and you've been taking ecstasy and drinking alcohol all day. Okay, I'm going to judge you a little bit on that one, but politely, and maybe some education After we treat you.
Tim Turk:Oh, and education and all that, but after we treat you we might talk to you a little bit about your decision making, but they want to have fun. They're there to have fun and they're going to do things so that they have fun. You know, it's like the difference between someone who's going out to get absolutely completely drunk, as drunk as they possibly can, and someone who's just going to have a couple to have a nice night. These people want to have fun, so they're going to go out, they're going to take their drugs, which is fine. If you want to take drugs, take drugs.
Tim Turk:But if something goes wrong, they always know the medical team is there to help them if needed and we maintain that nonjudgmental we are here to help you. So bring your friends here, don't let them wallow in their tent. We'll look after them for four or five hours if we need to, we don't mind. We have, you know, chairs out back and we have stretchers set up and we will look after them and we'll make them feel better. And then, you know, give them a Band-Aid and send them on their way.
Kate Coomber:It's an interesting initiative, isn't it? And I think that debate no doubt will go on.
Tim Turk:Yeah, I mean it's purely a public health thing, it's risk mitigation, it's risk management To know what's out there at the moment in the market too.
Kate Coomber:You imagine all of the emergency departments if they all had that knowledge of what is currently actually so Pill.
Tim Turk:Testing Australia is on Instagram. I have no idea what the handle thing is, but it's on Instagram and they post things every few days of. We have found this and it's a picture of the pill with a little grid behind it, so you know how big it is and all these things. This is what they thought it was and this is what it turns out it is, and it's highly potent, or it's. This is a pill that was being sold as ecstasy and it's actually 100% cocaine. Please don't take it.
Tim Turk:You know things like that, so it's that public knowledge, the education information is out there and people can find that information Like you know, if you're in an emergency room and you see, oh, it turns out they're. You know, people are selling cocaine on the Gold Coast. I should keep that in mind when I go do my shift and things like that.
Sam Miklos:What do you do when?
Kate Coomber:you're downtime.
Sam Miklos:Do you? You're there, you're super busy. You're at the fence face.
Tim Turk:You're out on locum.
Sam Miklos:Oh no, I take weekends off all the time.
Tim Turk:Yeah Well, every other weekend-ish. No, I just mountain biking, sometimes Just a lot of play with my kids. I hang out with my family, I just spend time with my family. I don't see them a lot because I'm gone in the morning, usually before they're awake, and I only see them for hours in the afternoon. So I'll just spend time with them. We'll go do stuff on the weekends with them or whatever you know. Just hang out, relax, take some down time of my own and just not think for a little while yeah, yeah, do you have your next thing that you're thinking?
Sam Miklos:I mean, I know you just don't think, but I mean, to be fair, you probably don't. You're just like, oh, look at the paper, but is there? Or do you ever think that you'll do one thing? You know? Do you ever think that?
Kate Coomber:you'll do one thing, you know. Do you ever think that you'll get to a point where I'm just going to get a permanent full-time job? It's going to be Monday to Friday and I'm going to be in this location for the next three years. I would be so.
Sam Miklos:Or maybe I want to be a politician because I don't know what's next. God no.
Tim Turk:No, no one would want me to be a politician because I would be too honest and just look at people and be just like, yeah, no, no. I would not do well in a political sphere.
Kate Coomber:That no judgment with my patients. It would be full judgment.
Tim Turk:Yeah, it would just I'd take all of the judgment that I was reserving. I actually have my diploma of the Royal Australian College of Medical Administration. I got my rural management diploma through them as well. So I've done some work with management spheres and rural hospitals and things. But honestly, I kind of like what I do at this level. I like the level of busyness I've managed to fix a good spot with kind of thing.
Tim Turk:Sometimes it's a bit too much and sometimes it's not enough, but I'm just I'm happy with what I'm doing right now. I'll probably keep doing it for a little while, but I'm always very open to the next hospital or the next place or the next location to see if there's anything interesting out there, to see if there's something fun to do. If there's. You know, like the population in the area where I live is exploding and the hospitals in those areas are not are going to have to be redeveloped in the next sort of five years or so, so that'll be interesting because, suddenly there'll be a brand new hospital next door.
Tim Turk:That you know. I can give them a ring on a Wednesday and see what happens.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, something on the weekend. Something on the weekend, yeah. Do you go back to Kingaroy?
Tim Turk:Oh, no, do you have a favorite location?
Sam Miklos:that you think, gosh, I need a break. I wouldn't mind going out to I need a break.
Kate Coomber:Maybe that was me speaking. I need a break from my four-year-old, from my four-year-old time.
Tim Turk:Actually. No, they're pretty good. My kids are actually really well-behaved. It's annoying.
Sam Miklos:I can't say it's their fault. Do you say they're four and two?
Tim Turk:They're four.
Kate Coomber:I have twin girls. I have twins, I have twin girls, twin girls, oh well wait till four turns into 14.
Tim Turk:I'm just going to have a shed out back or something that's fine or. I'll go do like one-week locums instead of two-day locums and things.
Tim Turk:I really like McLean down in New South Wales in that area. It's just a perfect size ED at this point for me. It's not too big, not too small. It's 24 hours a day. It's staffed properly, it's managed well, good support, good staff. I like it there. It's a nice town too. There's things to do in the area. It's not too far away from home so I can get there and get back relatively easily.
Kate Coomber:Do you ever take your family?
Tim Turk:They don't do a lot of locums Before kids. Shannon would come with me on some locums so I did some Tasmania stuff down in Launceston and things. She came with me and I worked 13 days in a row, with one day off in the middle to go from day shift to night shift, and she which isn't a day off.
Sam Miklos:No, no, no.
Kate Coomber:Because you stay up as late as you possibly can you?
Tim Turk:try to get as much sleep as you can. And then at 7 pm you go back to the hospital. It's like yeah, so we had a nice dinner though.
Kate Coomber:Lucky Shannon.
Tim Turk:Yeah, yeah, she went and did photography and she went and was a tourist and because so they gave me a rental car, which I thought was hilarious because the only time I used it was actually to get from the airport to the hotel because the hotel was maybe two blocks from the hospital.
Tim Turk:So I made sure that the rental car was in her name as well. Like I paid the extra money to get her name and I'm just like, here you go, have a great two week vacation in Launceston, completely paid for by a locum company. And yeah, and I mean I encourage all of the married doctors that I know, especially if you're pre-kids like, oh man, go do a locum, because you're going to get put up in a hotel, they're going to give you a car and you're going to be in a brand new place and you're paid to be there and they'll add on a day here and there. And you know, like you guys know this, one of the things I always ask for is, if I go do locums, if there's like a week in the middle, I'll ask them to rent me a minivan and then I'll fly the family in.
Tim Turk:So I did over Christmas this year or, pardon me, christmas last year, technically I guess I did a whole bunch of work in Australia up and down the peninsula, and I took five days off over Christmas. But I got them to rent a minivan for me instead of just a car. So toss some kids in the back of the minivan and we had a five day vacation, yeah, just just have fun and it was great.
Tim Turk:It was like let's check out this new location that we've never been to before and there was a water park there, hilariously enough, and things like that. Yeah, it's like oh apparently I went to this. What was the town called um, oh gosh, um cowell oh yeah, uh, cowell in south australia and they had just spent like apparently just a couple years before that, they'd spent like 11 million dollars building this amazing water park and redeveloping the entire waterfront and it was great.
Tim Turk:The town it was amazing. It had slides, it had splash pads, it had one of those big inflatable bouncy things, like when you just put it on the location guide.
Kate Coomber:Oh yeah, Like it was like if you, Perfect for a family oh if you're doing a week there.
Tim Turk:There's so much to do Just in and around that area you could easily fill a week up with kids there. That was a great little hospital. That was a very small hospital actually, that was almost. I was basically GP office. Just happened to have a hospital attached to it.
Sam Miklos:And a water park out the front. Yeah.
Tim Turk:And it was all walking distance because it's a small town. And then, yeah, I think from there I went down to Port Lincoln after that and Port Lincoln's a big, big town, practically city size, but yeah, yeah.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, super adventurous, I love the variety and the things that you keep just pushing forward with CMR are going to make a donation to a charity of your choice with this episode.
Tim Turk:So there's the Rural Doctors Association of Queensland. Rdaq is a group that I'm with and they have a charity, the foundation actually RDAQ.
Tim Turk:Foundation that helps rural doctors' families. So it's a support system for the families and that's what they're there for. They have a big, long acronym name that I can never remember and I always feel really guilty that I can't, but it's the, you know, the Rural Families Association, essentially, and they help people. You know you're moving into a small town. Here's what to expect. Here's a woman who's been in that town before, a person who's been in that town before, who can talk to you and tell you exactly what to do and, oh, you need to order this from this place and go to this baker and go to this place. And this is where you can find that. No, that don't go to that one. Go to this one instead. Or go to this one, not that one.
Kate Coomber:And so we can support the families of the doctors.
Tim Turk:The healthcare professionals will be staying, yeah interestingly, in canada they just started this brand new initiative in a lot of the small rural areas free childcare, free babysitting, guaranteed spots in daycares Like this. Is this cause they can't. You know, governments are not allowed to change the salaries. You know, like we, we all get that as doctors. We know that the government can't raise the salary. So it's the what else? Like you want me to come work in your small little town that has seemingly nothing to draw your family there? What are you going to give me? Well, it's not hard to get a place in a daycare yeah, they all know each other.
Tim Turk:They probably know who owns the daycare. They could just go over there and say hey, if we get a doctor who has a three-year-old, can you just make room for them? Sure, they'll do that you know, like if you know that you can, if you know walking into a town that your partner has a job and your kid has date sorry, and you and you you know.
Tim Turk:You know when you walk into a small town that your kid has daycare or school or whatever. Your partner has a job and your house has been sorted for at least sort of the first six months or so, where he's figured out yourself.
Sam Miklos:You're going to go and you're going to probably stay. I was going to say you'll probably stay. Yeah.
Tim Turk:And you'll stay longer.
Kate Coomber:The family is happier.
Sam Miklos:You know you can actually do what you do and work and not be worried you know, recruitment of doctors is usually you talk to the doctor.
Tim Turk:Retention of doctors is the family. Yeah, you know, because if you go home every night and your partner hates their life because they're, they're in a place that they don't want to be, you're not staying yeah, you're just not, you know um, but if the family loves it there, then you're gonna stay yeah, that is um that is so well said, about recruitment and retention.
Sam Miklos:It really is about the family, do you?
Kate Coomber:remember we went down to Victoria once and we met some of the doctors that we placed and their families all came we went and had a cup of tea with them and things and they were so grateful for the immersion of the families into those communities. It was so crucial.
Tim Turk:And when doctors go to conferences, we're wandering around the halls and like we're seeing all these recruitment companies like there's. You know CMR is a good one and that's why I stay with them, but you know there's others. They're all trying to recruit you, but the ones that we're going to stay with are the ones that will find out what our spouses do.
Tim Turk:Yeah, like right out like what you're a doctor, great, cool. You know there's 15 others walking next to you. What does your spouse do? Can we find them a job? What do you want to do? What? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do next? How can we make it so that you want to stay there and that's?
Sam Miklos:I think that there's a there's a bit of a shift coming that way, but it's really hard, it's really hard to convince management people too that you know we can't.
Tim Turk:we can't spend money on a break room, we have to spend money on a daycare spot or we can't spend money on a, you know, new lounge. We need to spend money on higher cars or something like that. You know, or or or you know we need to spruce up the doctor's house.
Tim Turk:You know like it's all well and good that they give you a doctor's house that has no air con in Queensland and it's like well, you know, I'm not going to stay, you know, or I'm not going to like it here, I'm going to have to go and spend my own money to get air con.
Kate Coomber:It'll be minimal and I'll do it for what needs to be and then I'll move on, yeah. Yeah.
Sam Miklos:Thank you so much, Tim, for your time today. Thanks for having me so many great stories and like such a life All at the last minute too.
Tim Turk:Sorry, all at the last minute, which I love.
Sam Miklos:Like everything happens for a reason, and it certainly has for you.
Tim Turk:Yeah.
Sam Miklos:We're just thrilled to have you as part of our CMR community, so thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you, it's been great. Thanks for tuning in to it Takes Heart.
Kate Coomber:If you love this episode, subscribe, leave a review or share it with a friend, and if you know someone with a great story in healthcare, get in touch. Follow us on socials for all the behind the scenes fun, and we'll see you next time.
