Allison Hempenstall, an Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) Registrar currently working on Thursday Island, interviews John Parker about his experience working in humanitarian medicine.
Dr John Parker was born and bred in Liverpool, UK and medically trained at Edinburgh University. He came to Australia to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef and never returned. He commenced a medical practice in Airlie Beach in Queensland to follow a passion in diving medicine and later worked at Golden Beach in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast.
Intermittently he has ventured with the Red Cross and MSF on humanitarian medical missions including 3 war zones, 2 epidemics and several refugee camps. More recently he has worked as SMO in the refugee detention centres on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island, medical officer in an Ebola Treatment Centre in Sierra Leone and spent a year as an expedition medical officer on Davis Station in Antarctica. He is presently working on Thursday Island in the Torres Straits. He has written ‘The Sports Diving Medical” and “Poetic Prescriptions for Feeling Good”. His latest publication “From Cholera to Ebola, confessions of a humanitarian doctor” is presently at the publishers.
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