From textbooks to internet and ultrasounds: One country doctor’s 50 years of change
Dr Ian Spencer has practised for decades in a vocation he has loved despite entering the field because 'he got a mark'.
When Dr Ian Spencer started his medical training in the 1960s, his mathematics requirement was completed on a hand-driven bookkeeping machine.
When he studied obstetrics, there were no ultrasounds. He has since witnessed the introduction of CT scans and echocardiograms, the internet and the mobile phone.
And in 1978, when he began as a doctor in the outback town of Bourke in NSW, there were no retrieval services.
When he had a critical patient, Dr Spencer would call a colleague in Sydney who would search for what to do in a physical textbook and call him back.
