Dr Robert Campbell has been recognised for his continuous service to Deniliquin and district.
He has been presented with the 2023 Rural Medical Service Award by the NSW Rural Doctors Network (RDN), for his 35 years of medical service in our community.
It represents a large portion of a medical career spanning close to 50 years.
“I’m very surprised but honoured to have received the award by the New South Wales Rural Doctors Network,” Dr Campbell said.
“Rural Health generally has so many hard-working people throughout the field, so to be recognised for any contribution is extremely humbling.”
Dr Campbell attained his medical degree from Melbourne University in 1976.
He went on to do his residency at Box Hill Hospital in the late 1970s, where he met his wife, Brenda, while she was working as a nurse.
During his career, Dr Campbell has had many accomplishments.
He completed his GP Advanced Skills Training in obstetrics and gynaecology in Leeds, UK, in the early 1980s, where “delivering babies and sliding down black snow hills at 2am to the hospital were both skills a doctor needed to have”.
After returning from the UK, Dr Campbell and his wife wanted to raise their family in a rural setting similar to their own regional Victorian upbringings.
After seeing a small advert in a Melbourne newspaper advertising for a rural GP with procedural training, Dr Campbell decided to join the George St Clinic in Deniliquin.
He later took ownership of the clinic in 1999.
“We stayed in Deni because, over the years, my wife and I fell in love with the town and knew it would be the perfect place to raise our family.” Dr Campbell said.
Throughout his nearly 47 years of medicine, Dr Campbell has seen extraordinary changes in not only the delivery of Rural and Regional medicine but the field of medicine itself.
Technological advances have been one of the largest forces that have changed the face of medicine, from patient care to the running of a rural clinic.
It has been a large learning curve, but it has come with witnessing better outcomes for patients time and time again.