The biggest adventure you can take
is to live the life of your dreams

“Dr. Lewandowski and his family maintained a lovely blog you're invited to read - and see the great photos - at http://lewnews.blogspot.com/

"I've been a family practitioner for 10 years in rural America and decided to take a break. I took a year from my practice to locum in Australia through Global Medical. My wife and two children, ages 9 and 12, came along and it was a wonderful experience. I have always wanted to see Australia and our schedule allowed us time every 2-to-3 weeks for a trip. We traveled to New Zealand, Tasmania and all over the main continent, seeing everything from the rainforests to the Great Barrier Reef to Ayers Rock in the middle of the desert. We swam in the surf, sailed on the ocean and went skiing in the mountains. The adventure exposed us to exotic places, cultures and peoples, including Australians, Aboriginals and Maoris. We were well-received by all and made some enduring friendships.

I was also able to grow and learn professionally. I worked in a rural hospital outside of Brisbane, where my work included ED, inpatient, obstetrics and surgery. I learned new techniques and different ways to approach age-old problems. I worked with great colleagues with divergent backgrounds, allowing us to learn from each other.

Global Medical was wonderful to work with; they made all the arrangements and cut right through all of the paperwork and red tape. They kept me well-informed and prepared, and continued to check up with me even after arriving in Australia.

Australia is a wonderful country with great people and I'm so glad my family and I had this experience. I am truly grateful for all of Global Medical?s help - for making it all possible and so easy. I'd recommend them to anyone interested in working overseas and look forward to working with them again sometime soon.”
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“I am very happy that I took the time and the effort to go and work in Australia with Global Medical. Although I did not do it for the money, I was well paid and my assignments were great successes. I'm really glad I did it. Global Medical's support was invaluable; without them, I would never have worked Down Under!”
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“The idea of working overseas is something we had been considering for a long time. With one of us recently completing residency training, it seemed an ideal time to explore our options more seriously. Global Medical had been recommended by a friend. They were prompt in retuning our call. After discussing our interests, the Global Medical staff presented us with a few different locum opportunities. We decided on Tasmania, Australia's island state.

We were impressed with the degree of professionalism, organization and attentiveness shown by the Global Medical team. They walked us through the necessary paperwork, and always seemed to be available late into the evening to answer our various questions. Even during our locum, the Global Medical staff continued to contact us to ensure that everything was running smoothly.

The locum was excellent. We both worked in a number of different clinics. The staff were all very receptive and seemed appreciative of our work. The experience of working in a different health care system was both challenging and extremely interesting.

While we worked hard during the week, we had ample opportunity to explore Tasmania. In fact, we explored much of the island, including many of its 19 National Parks. Camping and hiking were highlights, and we loved seeing the native animals including kangaroos, wallabys, wombats, penguins, parrots, possums, and Tasmanian Devils. During our holiday, we got to see parts of mainland Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef, and Uluru (formerly known as Ayer's Rock).

In the end, we were sad to finish. We had made some good friends, and found Tasmania to be an incredibly special place. Thanks to Global Medical Staffing, everything went very smoothly. We would highly recommend this kind of experience to others.”
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“Having just completed a year's stint in Queensland's areas of need in Australia, I would like to thank and compliment the cheerful and most efficient staff at GMS for making it such an enjoyable and pleasant experience.

Being a bit of a bird-watching fanatic, I found the outback of Queensland an amazing place for bird watching and we managed to see 285 different species and learn a lot of new calls during the year. I am sure that a more diligent and more clued up observer could easily improve on that tally!

I just thought that you might want to pitch your adverts for locum doctors in Wildlife and Bird life magazines to attract overseas doctors to do this trip and add to their 'Lifer List'. They won't be disappointed, I can assure you.

Highlights included the adrenaline rush of meeting the endangered, angry, male cassowary on a narrow path from the Dinner Falls in the Atherton Tablelands, and being chased back down to the creek. Later in the trip we were fortunate enough to see 9 more cassowaries, including a male with 3 chicks, whilst we were staying at Mission Beach.

In the Eungella National Park near Mackay, it was exciting to hear and find a noisy pitta - a very colorful forest bird.In the same park we saw platypus busy in the river at midday, which was rather unusual. We had seen them before in Yungaburra, but only at dawn or dusk!

A conducted tour of the Mareeba Wetlands was most instructive, and from the boat we saw pigmy geese and jacanas amongst the flowering lotuses. We were shown the captive breeding, gouldian finches - most colorful little birds. Whilst in Mt. Isa during the hot summer, we were privileged to see swarming black clouds of hundreds of thousands of budgerigars coming in to drink at the lakes edge.

A walk around the Apex Park lakes in Gatton, near Brisbane, would regularly yield 30-40 species, including a majestic pair of black swans with 7 cygnets and hundreds of plumed whistling ducks.

I will really miss the colorful parrots and the rousing dawn chorus of the kookaburras, magpies, crows, currawongs and the ubiquitous "kamikaze pilots" of the Australian skies, the rainbow lorikeets!

I would strongly recommend this itinerant locum stint in Queensland for any nature loving doctor wanting to get to know the avifauna of Australia more closely.

Best wishes and thanks again.”
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“A few months after my retirement as Medical Director of a long-term residential treatment center dealing with substance abuse and other addictions, I was interested in doing "something different." At the American Psychiatric Convention in New York we visited the Global Medical Staffing booth. We had visited this information exhibit before and were drawn to the excitement of practicing in such a beautiful country as New Zealand. But previous commitments always made applying something more than we could take on. This time, with more personal freedom, the question that presented itself was, "Why not?"

Over the next several weeks we worked with the Global Medical Staffing agents. They described a variety of openings and helped us discover which of them might make use of my psychiatric experience. They also were responsive to our personal desires for a chance to live near an ocean shore. After making a commitment in principle to take a position in New Zealand we began the process of securing credentials, visas, travel arrangements and other details attendant to living in a foreign country for half a year.

These procedure included a lot of detail and completion of forms. We found the Global Medical recruiter handling our application to be knowledgeable, helpful and understanding. With Global Medical's experienced assistance we got through it all and set off.

We were greeted at the airport by a person from my contract employer. After picking up a rental car we were taken to a beautiful rental home with a stunning view of snow-capped mountains, a tidal estuary and the blue Pacific Ocean. This positive beginning was consistent with our entire stay

I was consulting psychiatrist at the Alcohol and Drug Service and the Methadone Program. Over the months we worked together I was impressed by the experience, skill and attitudes of the multi-disciplinary teams. In the first week of clinical work I found myself in the central cell-block of the Police Station assessing a patient on our rolls. I wondered how typical this type of clinical work was and if I had made a horrible mistake in signing on. Not at all! At times the work was demanding but there was always a sense of collegial support. When my tour of duty was over I said goodbye to my colleagues with considerable sadness.

We found time on weekends, holidays and paid vacation days to see a lot of the country. We put some 30,000 kilometers on our provided car. There are only four million people in New Zealand which has a land area about the size of Great Britain so there is much wild and unspoiled territory. In addition to the magnificent scenery we found the New Zealand people we met to be friendly, helpful and welcoming.

We had a fine experience working overseas and thank Global Medical for their excellent care of us.”
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