Doctor calls time after 40 years in medicine

Busselton Medical Practice staff will have to adapt to life without their beloved general practitioner Dr Geoff Taylor when he retires in December after more than 40 years in the industry.

Dr Taylor has worked at the practice for 28 years and said there was no better place to be than in a regional town.

“I think I’ve finally come to terms with retiring, I’m not getting any younger,” he said

“I’ve really enjoyed working in general practice but I think the time has come to go and do more travelling.”

Dr Taylor is now 70 years old, and from experience he believes students and up-and-coming doctors should work in rural areas to experience the responsibility and decision making needed when they are the only port of call.

“People getting adequate experience to really take on rural medicine is rare,” he said.

“I don’t think doctors really start learning until they’re qualified and start dealing with problems themselves and making the tough decisions.”

Dr Taylor spent three months working in Tonga back in 2014 and said practising medicine was a very rewarding field to work in and he hoped more Perth doctors would choose to work in rural areas.

“There certainly are some real problems in rural general practice nowadays because so many of the GPs that are training ... have partners working in Perth and so they can’t move to the country,” he said.

“Trying to get doctors to come to the country is still a major problem.”

Dr Taylor will officially retire on Christmas Eve and said he was looking forward to having more time to continue a wide range of hobbies including diving, wildlife photography, theatre, and travelling.

“My wife and I still go diving quite regularly. I love exploring anything to do with wildlife, so that’s what I’ll spend a lot of my time doing now, I think,” he said.

“I have a house in Exmouth, so my wife and I can spend most of winter up there.”

The “lovely staff” and “some of the patients” will be the main things Dr Taylor misses when he leaves the practice.

“My wife says I might suffer from relevance deprivation once I retire,” he said.

With his extra free time, the beloved doctor will attempt to improve his ukulele and guitar playing, spend more time on his yacht during the summer, and hopes to spend time travelling with his wife in a new camper-van.