Trainee - Stage 1

Here in the Riverina, we treasure your skills and experience and we’re ready to roll out the red carpet to welcome you to town.

We’ve prepared oodles of goodies to help you move and settle in, including:

• Salary packaging up to $20,600 per annum tax free for living expenses! Take advantage of novated leasing a new car!
• 482 temporary visa sponsorship considerations
• Relocation assistance and accommodation support considerations
• Subsidised gym and leisure centre membership for you and your family
• Free confidential counselling services for you and your family

If you are an ACEM trainee looking to join a team of friendly and enthusiastic ED staff in a bustling regional centre, then look no further than the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital Emergency Department!

Wagga Wagga is the largest inland city in NSW, situated in the Riverina area just under five hours’ drive southwest of Sydney, four hours’ north from Melbourne, and just under three hours’ drive west from Canberra. It is a lovely and welcoming, family-friendly city with plenty to see and do. Some examples include the museum, art gallery and Civic Theatre, the Wagga Beach, the Wiradjuri walking track encircling the city, the beautiful Botanical Gardens, along with great boutiques, cafes, restaurants and wineries, good schools, and a local university. We are surrounded by stunning countryside in all directions, with the Snowy Mountains and multiple National Parks all within easy reach. There is a regional airport in Wagga which provides regular direct flights to and from Melbourne and Sydney in an hour, and Brisbane in two hours.

The city itself has a population of approximately 65,000 people. WWBH is the major rural referral hospital for the Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD), which services 250,000 people in total across the vast Murrumbidgee area in NSW.

The WWBH ED has over 45000 presentations per year, with a wide variety of cases including general medicine and surgery, obstetrics, orthopaedics, and mental health. Approximately 25% of the ED presentations are paediatrics, which meets the criteria for the ACEM training “Mixed ED” placements. One of the many advantages of coming to work in a regional centre is the exposure to rural medicine and procedural skills, which includes managing significant trauma cases from farming/machinery accidents and MVAs.

WWBH is the regional trauma centre seeing approximately 100 major trauma presentations per year, the regional stroke centre, and the regional PCI centre with 24/7 access to two interventional cardiology labs and interventional radiology services. The ED has 3 resuscitation beds, and acute and subacute / ambulatory care areas. There is a co-located Emergency Department Short Stay Unit (EMU) with 8 monitored beds. 

ACEM trainees are rostered to all areas of the ED including EMU, which ensures not only access to the breadth of presentations but makes the most of the opportunities in our procedure rich environment.  There is double FACEM cover from 0800-2400 daily with an on-call FACEM overnight.

Opportunities for the ACEM trainee at Wagga include 36 months accredited ED time, protected and IMMEDIATE access to critical care rotations in anaesthesia and ICU for 6 months, and a 3-month special skills post in ultrasound. In addition, trainees can rotate to paediatrics, medicine, and psychiatry as requested, and can achieve their required tertiary time through a well-established partnership with The Canberra Hospital. 

ACEM trainees are rostered to 10 hours of protected teaching time once a fortnight and are supported both financially and with favourable rostering to attend external courses.  Research is encouraged and supported by the ED, as is participation in trauma grand rounds and our M&M program.

Senior trainees ‘graduate’ onto the consultant roster and are supported in their final months of training with introduction to the in-charge role and supported on-call experience to better prepare for post Fellowship. ACEM has formalised a lot of the engrained senior trainee support on offer in WWBH into the Training Stage 4 component of the new training program.

WWBH ED also has strong ties to both University of New South Wales and University of Notre Dame Rural Medical Schools, with opportunities to support the student learning experience both within the ED and in an academic post.