Tennant Creek’s Sarah Goddard has been crowned the best Indigenous doctor in Australia for 2022 in the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association (AIDA) awards.
Dr Goddard works at the Tennant Creek Hospital and local general practice, as well as the Ali Curung Health Clinic.
After graduating from University of Newcastle in NSW in 2015, she completed her internship at the Royal Darwin Hospital, before choosing to take up residence in her hometown Tennant Creek.
Dr Goddard said she became a doctor to make a difference, after seeing first-hand as a young girl watching her mother being cared for by specialist medical teams.
“I don’t know how to really put it into words, but being a doctor is rewarding, fulfilling and I feel I am living a dream where I’m working both in general practice, emergency medicine and with the acute and chronically ill as well as working between the western and Indigenous worlds of understanding medicines,” she said.
“I wanted to become a rural doctor to help fill the lack of access of care in rural areas.
“I truly love treating all the people of the Barkly and out on the cattle stations, roadhouses and communities.”
Dr Goddard thanked the Tennant Creek Hospital, General Practice and her family and connections, as well as all the Indigenous doctors who have gone before her to make the path a little bit easier.
At the AIDA conference, Dr Goddard was also presented with a belated framed stethoscope, delayed due to no conferences being held during the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020.
This article appeared in Tennant & District Times, 7 October 2022.