A discussion with Dr Benson about working in Refugee and Aboriginal Health Carly Hayman (Flinders University)
Dr Jill Benson worked as a general practitioner for 30
years before circumstances changed and she considered a
11 years she has dedicated her practice to working in refugee and Indigenous health. Dr Benson is currently the Senior Medical Officer at the Migrant Health Service change in the direction of her career. For the last
in Adelaide, a state government funded service that provides health care to refugees and supports healthcare workers. In discussing her career and recent work, Dr Benson tells me
“I feel as though I have arrived at my future”.
What motivated you to start working in Refugee and Aboriginal Health? I’ve had a privileged life. I was lucky enough to be born into a loving family, go to school in Australia and study to become a doctor. I think there are lots of people who, through no fault of their own, were born in places without such privileges available to them. I feel a responsibility to share my privileges with others. Can you share with me a normal day for you at the Migrant Health Service? At the clinic I have an administrative role and I see patients here in the clinic. In my administrative role I organise meetings, I do advocacy, I write protocols, I do research, and I support the doctors here. For example, if there is a question like “Should we being doing lead levels on people under 13?” I’ll go and look at the literature, I’ll look at what the rest of the refugee services are doing around the country, I’ll ring IMVS and I’ll write up the protocol. I can then share these protocols with national networks such as the Refugee Health Networks of Australia. I also spend some of my time working at the clinics run here at the Migrant Health Service. We run two different sorts of clinic: the New Arrival Clinic and the Follow-Up Clinic. The New Arrival Clinic is run by the nurses for newly arrived refugees who have a series of blood, urine and stool tests done. When the vector magazine
results come back, the patients are booked in to see the GPs here. This is usually done within the first month of arrival in Australia. So for those people who have come from a developing country or refugee camp, they come with a huge variety of unpronounceable worms, infectious diseases and are more likely to have nutritional deficiencies. They are things that you just don’t see here in Australia. On top of all that you have to look at the mental health issues because part of coming here as a refugee is about being afraid for your life, afraid for your family’s well-being, and dealing with experiences of torture and trauma. You have to look at the enormous social issues from their past as well as the difficulties of settling here. At the Follow-Up Clinic we see people who need to be reviewed and discuss with them chronic diseases because for a lot of people we see chronic disease is not a health priority. They present with diabetes, heart problems and hypertension that has never been treated, so we need to get on top of that. The nurses here also run a huge variety of other clinics including immunisation, women’s health, and transition clinics, as well as drop-in services. Part of the team here also includes a counselling group and health workers from Bhutanese, Middle Eastern and African backgrounds.
amsa global health committee
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