General Surgery Resident
Shifts
| Date | Date (sort) | Times | Pay | Last advertised | Last advertised (sort) |
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Description
Cairns Hospital is the largest major referral hospital in Far North Queensland caring for patients from the Torres Strait to Tully. They offer many specialist health services. The health service provides public hospital and health services to a population of about 250,000 people. Top 3 things to do: 1. Dive the Great Barrier Reef 2. Hike the Thorsborne Trail on Hinchinbrook Island 3. Explore the Daintree
Location
Reviews
2025
Cairns ED was a friendly and supportive place to work. Their orientation and onboarding process was very ogranised and the accommodation we were provided was excellent. The hospital is near the centre of Cairns so we were able to walk to work but were also close enough to explore Cairns itself as we did not have a car; including walking distance to the marina for day trips to the Barrier Reef. Shifts were 8.5 hours rather than the usual 10 which means fewer days off in the fortnight for exploring but balances out with better pay on the daily rate.
2025
Orthopaedic Ward RMO Daily workflow: Prepare patient list 6:30am, start rounds at 7am, morning meeting at 7:30am, continue rounding with consultant/reg or by yourself post meeting, attend daily ortho MDT meetings 8:30am, consultant ward rounds twice weekly at 12pm. Usually finish by 4:30pm but often can run overtime. Jobs usually include wound reviews, reviewing clinical deterioration, patient discharges. There are specific RMOs allocated to admissions, wards and clinics and they usually stay in this role for half/full term. Overtime: Cairns does not pay for overtime even for their own permanent junior doctors. There is a daily pay rate for locums despite unavoidably doing overtime most days. Take this into consideration and plan ahead by handing over to after hours team. The permanent RMOs on a full day roster will finish at 5pm (they alternate between half days and full days), so you can handover jobs to them as well. Workload: Heavier on post take days. Usually will have 2 juniors total in a team, but can pull juniors from less busier ortho teams to help out if needed. Support: Well supported by registrars for ortho related things. Rarely work with consultants except on consultant ward rounds. I’m PGY3 with mostly ED experience so I felt comfortable dealing with clinical deterioration on the wards as ortho ward RMO. Very friendly inpatient teams who you can call for advice / referrals. There is a dedicated periop team who see patients who are medically comorbid. Orthogeris is available inconsistently (they only work till 2-3pm, some days there is no reg/consultant). IT system: Mostly iemr. Paper forms for imaging requests. Accommodation: Need to find yourself and locum agent will book. Given a budget of $150/night. I stayed at Gray Whale Anchor Inn which is 10 mins walk from the hospital - 1 bedroom unit with kitchen and bathroom, there is a shared coin laundry downstairs. Travel: No car hire provided by hospital. Buses are available but there seems to be one main route which do not reach some places that you may want to go to. Ubers are available but often long wait times. I would advise hiring a car especially on days off so you can do grocery shopping / explore places. It’s also very humid in Cairns and very difficult to walk outside for too long. Activities: Must visit places are Kuranda Scenic Railway / Skyrail, Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures, Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge!
2025
Great placement in Cairns Emergency Department as an RMO. Welcoming and well organised for our arrival, we were taken to arrange ID access, phones and a tour of the department. Department was well staffed with FACEMs/Registrars/RMOs and very supportive, easy to pick up the flow given I had worked with Queensland Health before. They use iEMR firstnet apart from radiology forms which are paper. The only thing that was different to what I expected was that shifts are 8.5 hours for locums so you have different start/finish times to other juniors, however most seniors are aware of this so wasn't an issue. I stayed in a lovely airbnb right next to the hospital which was convenient for shift work and still close enough to walk into the city. A car is useful for exploring the waterfalls and surrounds. Floriana was our go-to cafe near the hospital, and Edge Hill had nice restaurants to try. Overall definitely recommend this placement.
2022
1) Good working environment. 2) they allocate budget for acxom but we have to find our own accom.
General Surgery Resident
Cairns Base Hospital, 8 hours ago
Dec 15 to Jan 18