Dr Toohill adds to honours at Leongatha Healthcare

ACCOLADES keep arriving at Leongatha Healthcare, with Dr Graham Toohill named Rural Supervisor of the Year by Eastern Victoria General Practice Training (EVGPT).

EVGPT CEO Dr Mark Rowe said Dr Toohill has shown a strong commitment to improving healthcare in Gippsland and has been a major part of achieving that goal.

Graham has a positive and open-minded approach to supervising registrars and other learning doctors.

That outlook recently won praise from Dr Chris Ford, his Leongatha Healthcare colleague, who was declared Victoria’s General Practice Supervisor of the Year by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.

Graham was previously a supervisor for Chris, and the younger doctor outlined why he enjoyed Graham’s approach and found him easy to learn from.

“It was the open-door policy, being happy to help and the fact there was no such thing as a silly question,” Chris said of Graham’s positive attitude as a supervisor.

“I first met Chris as a medical student, so we’ve had a long time of encouraging each other,” Graham said, demonstrating his approach to supervising.

Graham thoroughly enjoys teaching learning doctors, describing it as an exciting part of the job, and never adopts the attitude that his role is exclusively about imparting knowledge.

“It’s about two-way learning, learning from the registrars and being able to put yourself in their shoes,” Graham said.

During the informal presentation award ceremony at Leongatha Healthcare, he provided an example of learning from a doctor he was supervising.

“I remember going to Yarram many years ago and having a registrar down there with a patient who had a really nasty lesion on the ankle, and I thought boy he’s going to have trouble getting that off and closing it up; but he did a beautiful job and used a horizontal mattress stitch and it worked brilliantly, and ever since then I’ve done the same thing,” Graham said.

Providing encouragement is also a crucial aspect of being a supervisor, he believes.

“When we’re learning we’re feeling vulnerable and often nervous about things, and having some supervision which encourages people that they can work it out and are able to make the decisions that benefit their patient and work out a good plan together is a very exciting thing,” Graham said.

After accepting his award, he thanked the team he works with, saying it’s not an individual job and that he needs all of them to help.

That applies equally to doctors and administration staff at the practice.

He reflected on his entry into medicine, saying he got into medical school by the skin of his teeth.

“But that was God’s grace, and I could start this career and I’m so thankful for it,” Graham said.

It seems certain his many patients and doctors he has supervised share that sense of thankfulness.

Christianity is an important influence on Graham’s approach to being a GP.

“The greatest healer of all time was Jesus, and I love the way Jesus cared for every individual with amazing love and grace and that’s what I want to do too,” the respected doctor said.

His passion for medicine and Christian beliefs have prompted Graham to adopt the simple philosophy of doing for others what we’d like them to do for us.

Graham’s Rural Supervisor of the Year honour puts him in the running to follow Chris as Victoria’s General Practice Supervisor of the Year in 2023.

Mark of EVGPT highlighted the positive environment Leongatha Healthcare provides, noting that it now has 16 GPs and they all stay.