In 1983 I left the major metropolitan hospital where I was employed as a staff medical imaging specialist and set up in private practice in a country town of about 10,000 people.
Country practice had limited appeal to Australian medical graduates, the majority of whom were born, bred and private-school educated in the city.
Consequently the medical fraternity in country towns were almost exclusively graduates from the Indian subcontinent, white South African graduates fleeing their post-apartheid country, and a smattering of Poms. And me.
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The Police had brought a young aboriginal man to my surgery. They told me they had "found him unconscious in his cell" at the lockup.
CT imaging revealed a large extradural haematoma - bleeding inside his skull around the brain following head injury - a life-threatening surgical emergency.
(This is an eminently curable condition. You may have read about the Australian GP who came across a single-car accident on a country road. The driver of the wrecked car showed classical signs and symptoms of an extradural haematoma.
The GP drained it with a power drill from the boot of his car and saved the man's life.)
I rang the town's only specialist surgeon, a South African, who was at the hospital for a routine elective surgery list.
I described the situation and told him that I would send the patient to the hospital by ambulance so that he could perform the necessary urgent surgery.
He declined the referral, telling me that that would be pointless, because the patient would inevitably just get drunk and fall over again.
The patient died later that day in the lockup.
(This post, which is simply factual, has been edited by the author, who is shit-scared of libel laws.
Any perceived inference of criticism of any individual mentioned in this post is unintentional.)
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