General News
5 June, 2024
Medals for Mount Isa's medical marvels
Dr Ulrich Orda and Sabine Orda were honoured by AMA Queensland.
After a sweet 16 years of providing tireless care and support across the North West, married Mount Isa medical stalwarts Dr Ulrich Orda and Sabine Orda have been presented two of the state’s highest honours for rural health professionals.
In a story familiar to many, Dr Orda and Mrs Orda had only planned to live and work in Mount Isa for two or three years, but the uniqueness and diversity of the region and its treatment needs have not only encouraged the couple to remain in the city, where they raised their family, but has also made them passionate advocates for rural and remote healthcare.
This commitment was recognised at the Australian Medical Association Queensland black tie gala, with Dr Orda being awarded the Rural Health Medal and Mrs Orda receiving the Excellence in Healthcare medal before a roomful of their peers.
It has been a long and unpredictable journey from the green fields of Kleefeld in Germany to the spinifex scattered hills of Mount Isa and finally on to the Brisbane awards night.
It all began in 2006 when the doctor and nurse couple found themselves at a fork in the road in their careers.
“We were at a point in our lives where we had to decide whether we would continue to do the same thing for the rest of our days or try doing something very different,” Dr Orda explained.
“We were both working in the medical field in Germany and decided to look for jobs overseas. We applied to Global Medical Staffing in Utah in America.
“In July 2007 they asked whether we would be interested working in Australia.”
Dr Orda said his only prior experience with Australia had been a two-month stay in Sydney when he was 16 years old.
“We were not against working in a rural or remote area, so when they offered Mount Isa as a location, we decided to take a three-day journey to see the city”.
Dr Orda said as their plane hovered over Mount Isa, preparing to land, in September 2007, he was seated on the right hand side of the plane, meaning he had a clear view of the mine site and nothing else.
“I began to think we would just stay on the plane and go straight back home,” he laughs.
“But something said to me, we have travelled this far, we should at least see the city.”
The Ordas had a simple criteria to determine whether to work in Mount Isa – they wanted to live and work in a place where their family could stay together.
“We wanted to be somewhere with a high school – we didn’t want our children to have to go away to boarding school,” Dr Orda said.
“Mount Isa had a high school and a primary school and all the other types of facilities where we could make a good life and so we decided to give the jobs here a try.”
The next bridge the couple had to cross was getting their medical credentials recognised in Australia, which was not as smooth sailing as they expected.
Despite each having university qualifications in medicine and nursing respectively, alongside decades of combined work experience, they would each have to resort to unorthodox methods to become accredited Australian medical professionals.
Mrs Orda worked behind the counter at McDonald’s for 20 days in order to gain the work references required to successfully apply for a medical educator position at James Cook University.
Dr Orda would wade though the Queensland health bureaucracy for months, until the 2009 floods at Karumba required urgent medical assistants, notably when a prominent local suffered a stroke and required life-saving transportation to Mount Isa.
In a sign of what can be achieved when the need is great, Dr Orda’s months long wading was over, and his medical credentials were recognised, with the stroke of a ministerial pen – a mere 30 minutes after concerns were raised about the lack of frontline medical help in the Gulf during the weather crisis.
Dr Orda, who now works as Director of Emergency and Director of Clinical Teaching at Mount Isa Hospital and Mrs Orda, who is Principal Medical Education Officer at Mount Isa Hospital, believe the AMA award recognition provides a platform to promote the professional and lifestyle benefits for medical workers when selecting a career in treating those across rural and remote communities.
“In a place like Mount Isa, a health worker can gain a broad range of skills and experiences well beyond what they would be exposed to in a metropolitan setting,” Dr Orda said.
“It is also a place that has the people, the sporting clubs and the kind of community where you can build a good life for yourself.”