Dr Lara Wieland has been a rural generalist in remote and rural Australia for over 23 years and more recently has been working as a remote medical educator. She has a passion for First Nations health and the importance for these communities of quality medical care and continuity in relationships and therefore retention.
In 2017 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore what factors can retain doctors in the most remote areas - which allowed her to travel the breadth of remote Canada meeting and learning from many inspiring remote Canadian colleagues. This built on an interest in qualitative research around remote retention.
She has a passion for mentoring and supporting upcoming colleagues who wish to work in remote communities and also works as a medical educator for trainee Rural Generalist residents in remote areas of Australia and has incorporated ideas she gleaned from her inspiring Canadian colleagues ‘in the north’.
She has now completed a meta aggregation of qualitative research on retention of remote doctors in Australia as part of a Masters in Remote and Polar Medicine (published in Australian Journal of Rural Health) and a Masters in Public Health.
Advocacy is very important to her and she has endeavoured to advocate for the communities she works for in a range of fora, both politically and organisationally, and has a special interest in maternal and child health, child abuse and neglect, population and public health and clinical systems and clinical leadership.
In addition to her clinical and medical education work, Dr Wieland and her husband are involved in volunteer youth work with remote Indigenous youth through a charity she helps run. She is also involved in International aid volunteer work when not restricted by COVID-19.
Her current positions are:
1. James Cook University; Senior Lecturer - Tablelands, JCU Medicine & Generalist Medical Training
2. Senior Medical Officer, Rural Generalist, Torres and Cape Health Service
3. Maternal and Child Health Medical Officer, Apunipima Cape York Health Service.
Project
The Bob and June Prickett Churchill Fellowship to learn and apply lessons on how to recruit, retain and care for health professionals in rural health
Lara Wieland
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