No power, no reception, no worries for remote CCE candidate

As Dr Megan Yannakouros says, ‘remoteness breeds ingenuity’.
 
And that sentiment was put to the test last month, when she was faced with sitting exams in remote East Arnhem Land, in the middle of a major power outage.
 
That meant no internet, no mobile service, and no electricity, plunging the entire Northern Territory town of Nhulunbuy into near-complete isolation.
 
While power outages are not uncommon in that part of the world, the 8.30 pm timing was far from ideal as Dr Yannakouros was due to sit her RACGP Clinical Competency Exam the next morning.
 
Fortunately, it returned 12 hours later. Unfortunately, the signal was poor, data was unavailable, and the NBN cable to East Arnhem land had failed and would take several days to fix.
 
The local hospital also had no landlines or internet so was ruled out as a potential exam location, as was Nhulunbuy’s nearest population centre, Katherine, an eight-hour drive away.
 
Dr Yannakourous is no stranger to the havoc power outages can sometimes wreak, having worked in the Top End intermittently for the past two decades, but admits this situation was a little different.
 
‘Having both power and major telecommunications problems is quite uncommon,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘By this time, there weren’t a lot of options that were going to allow me to sit this exam!’
 
And so, the mad scramble for a solution began. At first glance, the situation looked dire, but that was when the town stepped up and rallied around their local doctor, coming up with an intricate plan.
 
‘I called our Assistant Director of Medical Services, who was about to board a plane to travel from Darwin to Gove,’ Dr Yannakouros explained.
 
‘She contacted her husband who works for a local organisation managing the local quarry.
 
‘The site office uses a generator for power and Starlink internet, and the solution was found.’
 
In a block hut, surrounded by constantly circling heavy machinery and the roar of a generator, Dr Yannakouros sat for several hours, somehow managing to complete her exam and keep a resilient smile on her face.
 
‘We often have to solve problems in our working lives differently than if we lived in a big city,’ she said.
 
‘I think this mindset is quite common in rural and remote areas, as is the willingness to help other people.’
 
For Dr Yannakouros, it is all part of living and working in a small town, where doctors look after their patients, but patients also look after their doctors.
 
‘I started medical school in Adelaide, but we came back to the NT on the Flinders University rural placement pathway, spending three months in Nhulunbuy and Alice Springs, before finishing medical school in Darwin,’ she said.
 
‘I then worked at RDH for seven years before deciding to move back to Nhulunbuy to complete GP training and I now work between Gove Hospital and the primary healthcare clinics on Groote Eylandt.
 
‘You get to know patients, and their families and living in the same community means that you often have shared experiences.
 
‘We are exposed to extraordinary clinical experiences that I know I would be unlikely to see in other places.’
 
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CCE Clinical Competency Exam rural rural workforce