Description
Alice Springs Hospital (ASH) is the Regional Base Hospital of the Central Australian Region covering a 1.6 million square kilometre catchment area. The hospital was opened in 1977, redeveloped in 2002, and now offers a range of services including: day-surgery, emergency medicine, ITU, HDU, maternity, medical, paediatrics, special care nursery, surgical and mental health. There is also a Royal Flying Doctors base at Alice Springs and the hospital has links to external research organisations such as Menzies School of Health Research, the Centre for Remote Health, Flinders University and Charles Darwin University. Top 3 things to do: 1. Uluru and Kata Tjuda 2. Larapinta Trail 3. Alice Springs Desert Park
Location
Reviews
2026
Very enjoyable and eye opening stint at Alice Springs. As the Registrar working in the ED you act as the first port of call and a conduit for the residents to discuss their patients before presenting to the SMO. A large locum workforce both for doctors and nurses. Notes and charting in the ED is on paper while they use the Acacia system to manage flow - personally, one of the worst IT systems I have seen. Majority of presentations are lower acuity, chronic medical issues. Copious natural wonders to see while there, would recommend for an ED Registrar at any level.
2026
Work load was good - busy with interesting patients and given an appropriate amount of responsibility. accessible knowledgeable and kind consultants, multiple paper rounds per day. Some bosses would do late paper rounds, but then would approve overtime when submitted that was secondary to jobs that arose from this. Paper based notes and electronic medication prescribing on EMMA (I personally love EMMA and think its very intuitive and fast) Was housed in an onsite studio: very safe, within the walls/fence of the hospital. Good A/C. Free hospital vehicles for use to a maximum of 4 hrs. These cars were not always easy to book due to demand. Onsite 20m pool for free use which is great and very social Would highly recommend working for gen med in Alice. Even as a locum, the admin staff treated me very well and afforded my a week off that I had planned before I took the locum contract.
2022
Spent 6 weeks here as a student so can’t specifically comment on the locum side of things but loved my time here. Worked with a great team in ED, very supportive and keen to teach. There’s a lot of locums at the hospital but many long term staff too. The town is also amazing and there’s so much to see and do, way more than Uluru. Highly recommend, can’t wait to get back.
2025
This was an awesome placement. ASH is one of the most culturally sensitive hospitals that I have worked in with close relations between patients, community clinics, allied health and the ALOs. The hospital was on the verge of a code yellow, so very busy during my time here with 1-2 hours of overtime daily (paid..requires consultant approval prior) at the beginning of the rotation, but this settled to 8am-4pm shifts when the patient load settled. There are 4 gen med teams with an even split of post take patients daily to average out the team's workloads (minus maintenance patients) . Each team has 1-2 interns or RMOS, 1-2 Registrars and 1 consultant depending on staffing availability. I stayed in hospital accomodation on site which was a studio apartment, fully equipped with good air conditioning (required for the summer). The hospital pool is only a 100m walk away. I would 100% recommend working at Alice Springs Hospital to anyone! In addition to the hospital and the work, the town of Alice Springs has so many festivals, running groups, quirky cafes and restaurants plus incredible camping/trail running/4WD/hiking/waterholes! It's such a good place to explore!
2026
Wonderful time as a Gen Med RMO in Alice, very friendly hospital with excellent staff (large number of locums supplementing full time staff). Generally a fairly social group given lots of locums so people always organising things to do. Very interesting medicine and well supported by seniors. Pretty rough weather in summer (41C every day) but still lots of things to do - desert park, trails/watering holes but all benefit from having car available, 4WD even better!
2026
I did 3 months as an RMO. I ended up doing a full term on Cardiology as well as two weeks on gen med ward nights and a week on gen med. The workload was very manageable and you are supported well by registrars and consultants who are all very friendly! Cardiology was a great team however a lot of the other locums ended up rotating between each gen med team every 1-2 weeks which made it a little more tricky when having to switch constantly. Nights are normally pretty chill- you are with another resident as well as a registrar though they normally are just in ED admitting (and you may have to go down and help if they’re busy). Unfortunately locums only get two days off after 7 nights, and I ended up working at least one day on the majority of my weekends. They don’t really orient you to the hospital- a lot of it I had to figure out myself including systems access however the online systems are fairly easy to use. It is a paper notes system with some stuff online. I stayed in the nurses quarters which is not normally where most locum doctors stay but they said they had no room. This is a small room with a sink and you share a bathroom/shower and kitchen with 30 others (very similar to college!) unlike the doctors accomodation. This does make for a very social time but some people really didn’t enjoy this. Doctors accomodation is normally a private unit or three person-like townhouse. However both nurses and doctors accomodation had lots of issues with bed bugs, rats and broken facilities which was the only major downside of my stay. I would still recommend this very highly- the patients were extremely interesting, there was good teaching and you see firsthand how different healthcare and quality of life is. Alice was amazing for exploring- so many good camping spots and hikes and the town was always fun to go out in.