Dr Paddy ready for a new adventure in the Kimberley

After treating patients in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the cities of Qatar, and regional Queensland, Irish general practitioner Dr Patrick “Paddy” Davern has arrived in the remote West Kimberley to tackle the next chapter of his 30-year medical career.

Dr Davern started work at the Derby Aboriginal Health Service earlier this month, relocating permanently from Ireland where he had spent recent years in local general practice.

While his career has spanned three continents, Dr Davern said Australia was a landscape he and his wife Anne, a nurse, always intended to return to after a brief stint in regional Queensland in the late 1980s.

“From 1992 to 1994 I worked in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, which was a small town in the desert then,” Dr Davern said.

“I’ve worked in Qatar for eight years. I’ve encountered different cultures and different physical environments before.”

Now in his 60s and with his children grown up, he said the opportunity to plunge into remote WA medicine arrived at the perfect time.

“I had it always in my mind that when I got into my 60s . . . I could go off again, and I wanted to explore,” he said.

The shift to Derby brought a vastly different clinical landscape to Western Europe.

“There’s a steep learning curve. Clinically with illnesses we don’t see commonly in Ireland, like rheumatic fever or diphtheria,” Dr Davern said.

“Administratively with Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which we have to get familiar with.

“Then to adapt to a new culture and adapt to a new physical environment with heat and things like that.”

The clinical realities Dr Davern highlights are central to northern Australia’s public health challenges.

The Kimberley region continues to record some of the highest rates of rheumatic heart disease globally, an entirely preventable illness driven by socio-economic factors and overcrowded housing that has been largely eradicated in modern Europe and metropolitan Australia.

Primary care clinics like DAHS serve as the frontline in preventing the repeated bacterial infections that lead to permanent heart damage, making long-term medical continuity critical.

Dr Davern secured his placement after connecting with Rural Health West representatives at a medical recruitment fair in Dublin last year.

“I think the most important thing is human connection. When you meet somebody and you talk to them face to face, you get a greater sense from people’s body language than you do if you’re emailing someone,” he said.

He credited the agency with guiding him through the rigorous Australian regulatory framework.

According to workforce data from Rural Health West, international medical graduates comprise more than one-third of the medical workforce across WA’s Aboriginal community controlled health services.

Regional health advocates have long-warned that a heavy systemic reliance on short-term fly-in, fly-out locum doctors can disrupt the continuity of care needed to manage complex, chronic conditions like diabetes and renal disease.

The arrival of an experienced, long-term practitioner is a significant win for the West Kimberley, where geographical isolation means the closest major tertiary hospital requires an emergency flight or a massive road transfer.

For Dr Davern, the transition ultimately hinges on building trust on the ground.

“The most important thing is human connection,” he said.