When the Clement family left Canterbury to buy their own farm on the West Coast, it wasn’t just cows, land and family life they had to consider but also Dr Abby Clement’s career as a rural GP.
“We were making these decisions about what was going to work for our family but during this time we realised we actually can move regions, why can’t we? My job’s not going to stop it, I’m going to be needed anywhere I go. It was cool that we had that flexibility,” Abby said.
While she was confident her skills would be in demand, she was eight months pregnant with her third child when they made the move so she knew she wouldn’t be able to take a new job straight away.
“I’d put feelers out and the response was, ‘Sweet as, I’m sure we can work something out’,” Abby recalled.
Paul interrupted: “I think you’re understating that, there was huge excitement there was a GP coming to the area!”
It’s no secret that rural GPs are in short supply in New Zealand, especially in districts far away from big cities, like the West Coast, so Abby’s arrival was very welcome. She now works two and a half days a week in the Hokitika clinic as well as half a day working from home for Canterbury DHB and juggles family life and helping Paul on the farm around that.
“I organise myself so that I work part-time because that’s what I can do and if I was working full-time I would just be too stressed, there would be too many other pressures on me, that I’d end up working 80 hours a week.”
Brought up in Sumner, Christchurch, Abby studied for six years at medical school before choosing Hastings Hospital for her first year house officer experience. After she and Paul had travelled overseas for a year and returned to Canterbury, she chose to become a general practitioner, which added a further three years of on-the-job training.
“It’s a really rewarding job as well as it works for our life as farmers. So we’re never going to live in a city,” Abby said.
“It’s a highly specialised area, not specialised in that it’s focused on one subject, but you have to know about everything and you have to navigate the tricky situations in brief time slots, every 15 minutes.”
She worked in Darfield, Canterbury, for five years and about the time she and Paul began to seriously think about buying a farm on the coast, the covid pandemic swept New Zealand and the world.
“It put the brakes on everything for a year because I was in the middle of the health system and then we went into lockdown. Everyone else’s view of lockdown was staying at home but my view was getting into hazmat gear, working in a container office for a day and coming home and not being able to touch the kids until I’d stripped everything off and had a shower,” she recalled.
“We got into a honeymoon phase after the first lockdown when we all got to do whatever we liked as long as we didn’t let other people in and that’s the point where Paul and I ended up figuring things out again and organising our move.”
The first season was a baptism of fire but while Paul quite quickly came to love farming on the coast, it took Abby longer to settle in.
“Our move here was really tough for me because a month later I had a baby and then the calf-rearing disasters and moving to a new region, I didn’t have all the social supports in place.
“And then, working as a GP, I was struggling to figure out how to put myself out there whilst also being a public figure so I’m taking a lot longer to feel really confident. I think I’m finally getting somewhere but Paul, he’s absolutely in his element.”
Abby said the medical practice she’s now part of could easily support at least two more doctors but it’s not just a matter of the current team doing longer hours.
“I think it’s important we as doctors also look after ourselves because if we can’t look after ourselves we can’t look after everyone else so when I finish my work for the day, I switch off. We have some of our highly skilled nurses covering some of the on-call so we can focus on switching off and having work and home life.
“Most rural New Zealand general practices are operating with not enough doctors so the nurses work hard trying to fill the need, doctors are trying their best to be as efficient as we can to provide the services that are needed and then the patients end up having to wait.”
She said the region is a high needs community because of the socioeconomics and isolation.
“Historically it’s been really hard to get medical care and reliable access to healthcare here so it’s hard to build up that trust. If you’ve got something wrong, you’re more likely to present a bit later and by then people are sicker and it doesn’t help when you have to book a month in advance.
“We’re working as hard as we can on improving some of those inequities.”
And as she gets used to being a doctor on the coast as well as an important part of the farming team, she’s also starting to appreciate what else the region has to offer.
“It’s quite easy to be stuck in the house with the children but we’ve got an awesome beach down there, there’s all these cool things. We can take the kayaks out, I can go out on my paddle board, I can go for a run. I have an awesome loop which comes down the main farm laneway, then out to the beach, through the creek usually – occasionally I swim with my phone on top of my head – and then back to the house and it doesn’t get old.”
