ED reg
Shifts
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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.
2026
I worked in Alice Springs Gen Med as an RMO for 3 months. Its a well supported role working within a team. Mixed roster across days, evenings and nights. Workload was variable ranging from enough time to sit down to have a coffee outside the hospital to no meal break with 2-3 hours of overtime. Facilities were fine - hospital uses paper-based notes with EMR for results and charting. I did not receive any orientation to the programs or runnings of the unit, but it was easy to pick up and ran similarly to other medical units around the country. The only accommodation offered to me was the nursing quarters for 3 months (which is infamously grim with shared bathroom/kitchen with a floor of people). GoLocum helped me find a granny flat in Alice Springs to stay in (hospital reimbursed me for the cost) which was lovely although a bit isolating. Hire cars are available for 4 hours per day and cant be booked in advance. They could only be booked while on site so I had to ride my bike to the hospital to find out if there were any available (which there often weren't). There was a long delay in getting paid at first (7 weeks) so would have struggled with this if I didn't have an emergency fund available to me. There are plenty of things to do and see outdoors in Alice Springs if you have a car available - waterholes, hiking, bike trails etc. Other junior doctors in Alice Springs are often looking for things to do so it wasnt hard to find people to go exploring with. Overall the medicine and cases I saw in Alice Springs were unreal with excellent learning opportunities clinically and culturally. Would definitely return but only if there was accommodation available on site or a hire car was provided.
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 really enjoyed this placement. I had a 4-week placement as a Gen Surg RMO and 1 week as a Gen Med evening RMO. There are 3 teams with 2 registrars each, plus a JMO. The regs stay attached to the same team, whereas the roster for the JMOs have them moving between the teams. There are 2 local consultants (team 1 + 2), whereas team 3 has a roster of rotating locum consultants. The surg workload ebbs and flows, but is generally quite a busy department. There is quite a high volume of things like incision + drainages, wound debridements etc., so there is usually a pretty reasonable turnover of patients. In saying that, there were some pretty intense traumas that came through - often transferred from more rural areas into Alice. The hospital has a combined electronic system and paper system. Most people within the hospital will write an online admission note, but all subsequent daily notes (ward rounds, consults etc), are written on paper notes. Other paper based pt info include; observations, fluid charts, blood forms, imaging forms, blood transfusions and IVF. Whereas medications are prescribed online, results including imaging are viewed online. It can take a couple of days to get used to the IT systems, but it's not that difficult to pick up. I did not receive a formal orientation to the various systems, not sure if they do one, but my colleagues I worked with were really great at showing me what to use them. Re daily workflow; start at 7am, ward round at 0730, which usually finishes around 0930/10am depending on how many patients there are. Finish at 3pm, with an evening JMO starting at 2:30pm who you hand over any outstanding jobs to. If you end up doing overtime, the head of department is pretty happy to sign the variance form (overtime form) if you've appropriately justified it. There is usually enough downtime during the week to allow a JMO or two to go to theatre once or twice a week, and the regs that were there were pretty happy to get you involved, as are the consultants. My week on Gen Med was starting at 2:30pm and working until 10:30pm. It is a cover shift, so you hold the arvo pager that will begin going off at 4pm once the med teams finish. The nights team starts at 8:30pm, so you can hand over any outstanding jobs to them. Otherwise the pager finishes going off at 10pm, giving you half an hour to tidy anything up. If there's not much going on, on the wards you can also help out the admitting reg on. For METs in the evening, its you, med reg, surg evening JMO and ICU reg who turn up each time. The accommodation I was staying in was on hospital grounds and was dorm style. Single rooms, shared bathroom, shared kitchen. Everything was clean, kitchen was pretty well stocked in terms of cooking equipment. The dorm style makes getting to know people easier, as there are many agency and locums working at the hospial. Regs were also on hospital grounds but usually stayed in their own self-contained units. There is SO much within and around Alice to do and explore. So many beautiful places to see just outside of Alice, but if you want to go further you've got Uluru and King's Canyon! Several local cafes in town and near the hospital that do great coffee. The bakery in town has amazing pastries and I would recommend visiting. Overall, would recommend this placement. You meet lots of people and get to see a different side of medicine that I believe everyone should have a chance to experience.
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.
ED reg
Alice Springs Hospital, 1 hour ago
Nov 4 to Dec 15