{"id":1127,"date":"2022-12-14T12:08:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T01:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2022-12-15T13:20:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T02:50:42","slug":"ntmp-student-madison-ludwig-makes-her-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/2022\/12\/14\/ntmp-student-madison-ludwig-makes-her-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"NTMP student Madison Ludwig makes her mark"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Born within sight of the Hammersley Ranges at the tiny Paraburdoo hospital, in the Pilbara, WA, Madison Ludwig seems always to have been destined for something special. She just didn\u2019t accept it at the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Kungarakan and Gurindji woman, who is a second year medical student in the Northern Territory Medical Program<\/a> never thought she would be smart enough for medicine.
\n\u201cSchool kept me busy, I worked at Target and played footy for St Marys. I did pretty well, but I was never top of the class and it didn\u2019t cross my mind that I could become a doctor,\u201d Maddy says.<\/p>\n

Her family had moved around a succession of small communities before coming home to Darwin in the latter years of Maddy\u2019s primary schooling \u2013 so it didn\u2019t seem like such a huge jump to leave home again to study at Curtin University in Perth. After seeing so many people in her community with health issues, nursing seemed to be a good career choice.<\/p>\n

After a year in Perth, a year on the road as a remote area nurse across WA and then two more years as a renal nurse back in Darwin, Maddy was exposed to a wide range of health environments, but progressively realised that growing her clinical knowledge to understand why health conditions occurred was the part of her job that she enjoyed most \u2013 which seemed to be pointing her in the direction of a new career in medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the renal service we have an Indigenous doctor who the patients love, and they all want to see her. In the same way there were just two Indigenous nurses in the renal unit, but most of the patients were Indigenous and they would all ask to have us as their dialysis nurse,\u201d Maddy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really obvious to me that we definitely needed more Indigenous doctors. In Darwin most of the patients are Indigenous and you do see patients struggle to communicate and connect with non-Indigenous doctors, so I began to think I would be of greater value if I was a doctor \u2013 but I still didn\u2019t think I would get in.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A friend from primary school was in the final years of the Northern Territory Medical Program and as COVID hit, restricting social options, he encouraged her to apply.<\/p>\n

Maddy completed the Indigenous Entry Stream<\/a> over three months and at the end of 2020, found she had been accepted into the program. Plagued with self-doubt, she only quit her nursing program two weeks before her first classes started, as she worked to convince herself that she was capable of becoming a doctor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was worried that I wasn\u2019t smart enough for medicine. I didn\u2019t have to do the GAMSAT test like everyone else and that led me to lots of questions about whether I was good enough. I have talked about this with some of the other students, and despite their entry pathway, this seemed to be a common feeling,\u201d she says.
\n\u201cThen a few people around me said, \u2018Just do it, give it a go and if it\u2019s too much, you can always leave\u2019.
\n\u201cWithin a few weeks I started to realise it is hard, and there is a lot of time and effort involved, but it\u2019s definitely manageable.<\/p>\n

“I realised that with the Indigenous pathway program, I came into the course just as prepared as everybody else.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOnce you are in, you quickly realise that you are up to the pace, and can keep up with it.
\n\u201cHaving friends in med school has been really important to me. You find your little crew and we study together, keep each other on track and play games of Uno in between study to break it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am also lucky in that I have a lot of friends and family in the medical and nursing fields, who can help me keep motivated and on track.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say you don\u2019t have to be smart to study medicine, you just have to work hard, and I thought that was a bit of a one-liner, but it really is true.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to be the smartest in the room. Being academically capable is essential of course, but also problem-solving skills and people skills are incredibly important as well.\u201cThe GAMSAT test doesn\u2019t evaluate some of those crucial skills \u2013 it doesn\u2019t define you as a person, or as a doctor.<\/p>\n

“I am confident now that I will graduate with a whole range of skills that will help me become a confident and competent doctor for all of my future patients, and in particular for my Indigenous patients.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Born within sight of the Hammersley Ranges at the tiny Paraburdoo hospital, in the Pilbara, WA, Madison Ludwig seems always to have been destined for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4359,"featured_media":1128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2863,1625,2777,3320,3260,2796,3540,1],"tags":[341,499,622,1364,1334,524],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alice-springs","category-flinders-nt","category-katherine","category-medicine","category-mt-gambier","category-nhulunbuy","category-rural-and-remote","category-uncategorised","tag-college-of-medicine-and-public-health","tag-flinders-nt","tag-flinders-nt-medical-program","tag-flinders-rural-and-remote-health","tag-indigenous-entry-stream","tag-northern-territory-medical-program"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/mph-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}