“He was really enthusiastic on the phone and said, ‘you should come and visit and check it out’, which I did and that was February of 2016. And then in November, I got on a plane and moved to Australia. And that was meant to be two years and that's about five and a half years ago now,” Dr Budd said.
He said he was almost knocked for six when he left his snow covered home in Scotland and set foot in Katherine, right in the middle of a steamy Build-Up.
While he’s stayed for a lot longer than he originally intended he said the pattern of staying in the NT for longer than planned was not uncommon for health professionals.
As the Katherine Hospital Clinical Lead for Medicine, and a specialist physician in Respiratory and General Medicine, he works closely with students from Flinders University’s Northern Territory Medical Program to ensure they receive a diverse and satisfying placement.
"As Katherine Hospital has grown, my colleagues, both rural generalists and specialists, within the hospital; we've kind of made sure that education is a focus," he said.
"We do this by making sure that the medical students come to us and have a really great experience. We want to ensure that they feel they have easy access to senior doctors to ask them questions and have an open dialogue.
We have certain goals for them during their time in Katherine and, we want to make sure that by the end of it, they have developed their clinic skills especially their clinical presentation skills,” he said.
