In an earlier opinion piece for AusDoc, I described my difficulty obtaining admitting privileges at Bourke District Hospital, where the board struggled to accept that a “nut doctor” could function as a competent country GP.

What follows is the reverse: my effective demotion from consultant physician status after my appointment to the foundation chair of general practice at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

I had enjoyed my time in Bourke and would have stayed longer had my mother, whom I’d seen little of over the previous 12 years, not become ill. I returned to Perth and took up a senior lectureship in the Department of Medicine at UWA, a position that also carried appointment as a consultant physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

The transition from rural generalist to urban specialist was straightforward. I fulfilled my clinical  duties and introduced several needed teaching and nursing innovations.