Celebrating 20 years of rural medical training

On the 20th anniversary of UQRCS, it is only fitting to check in with one of its first students.

As a kid growing up on a Tenterfield property in New South Wales, Dr Dan Halliday witnessed first-hand how valued rural medical practitioners were in regional communities.

So, when he headed off to study, the idea of returning to a regional town was always in the back on his mind.

“I suppose you could say I was on the path to rural medical practice from the beginning,” Dr Halliday reflects.

“When I started to question the accepted premise of rural, remote and Indigenous communities having to accept poorer health outcomes and levels of care just because of where they lived, my direction was set.

“Also, the perception by many around me that my idea of becoming a doctor wasn’t really feasible for a kid from the bush, was like fanning a fire.”

Coming out of the harsh drought of 1993-94, farming didn’t offer a secure future, so Dr Halliday’s parents supported him to pursue a professional career.

“Basically, they encouraged me to use my brains, experience the world beyond Tenterfield, and if I wanted to return to a rural area, that was my decision,” he adds.

After completing a Biomedical Science degree at Griffith University, Dr Halliday was accepted into the UQ Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program in 1999. As he progressed through his studies, he married his wife Cathy in the break between second and third years.

In his fourth year of studying medicine, Dr Halliday was in the first cohort of UQ’s Rural Clinical School at the Toowoomba Regional Clinical Unit.

“While some students may have been reluctant to venture into the rural clinical school space at the time, UQRCS offered me the order and diversity of rotations that suited my preferences,” he says.

“It also provided me with the ability to re-engage with a rural and regional practice and patient base.

“I was very fortunate to undertake obstetric and subspecialty terms based out of Toowoomba in 2002, which built on my rural terms in Charleville and Cunnamulla the year before.

“Those remote placements were quite formative for me – I was exposed to rural icons such as Dr Jim Baker and Dr Chester Wilson.”

After graduating in 2002, Dr Halliday moved to Central Queensland for his internship and residency at the Rockhampton Base Hospital. Since late 2007, he and his family have called the regional town of Stanthorpe home.

“The variety and overwhelming appreciation from the community is what I love most about working in rural practice,” Dr Halliday says.

“I would love to think that they develop the same appreciation I have for rural and remote medicine, and one day they too will call me a colleague.”