Consider training that prepares you to be an independent practitioner, partnering with close-knit communities, equipped to deliver excellent healthcare in the face of complex sociogeographic obstacles in rural Australia. Now consider training that prepares you to be an acute diagnostician with the breadth of generalist skills and knowledge to be a medical leader with expertise in resuscitation, managing uncertainty and caring for the critically unwell. As a beneficiary of positive longitudinal rural student experiences, I chose, as a junior doctor, to dual train in rural generalism and emergency medicine, in an era when this was possible. Some see this as ambitious, while I see it as a part of my continual pursuit to be a better doctor; by addressing my deficits and gaining experience. 

I love the variety, acuity, and the continuity of care in my work, while I provide cradle to grave medicine, where I can support my patients through the joyous birth of their child or in their darkest hour saying goodbye to a loved one. I see the need for increased emergency medicine expertise in rural Australia, but not from any metropolitan-trained emergency physician – we need rurally-inclined emergency specialists that are passionate advocates, who understand their rural context with the flexibility and mentality of being a jack-of-all-trades. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why don’t we reopen the door, collaborate with the college of experts in the rural context and welcome a recognised dual training program for specialist rural generalist emergency physicians?