Meet Janet, a volunteer in the ASRC’s Health Program.

For 18 years, Janet has volunteered as a doctor in the ASRC’s Health Program and she still calls it “good fun”. Her reason for showing up is simple: everyone deserves access to good medical care. “It is a basic human right, along with access to education, social welfare and other community services,” she says. Giving to social causes she believes in has run through her whole career as a general practitioner and she has volunteered in various capacities along the way. 

She has been a member of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War for more than 40 years and is also a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) – founded in Melbourne in 2007 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

When Janet joined the ASRC as a volunteer doctor in 2008, she was struck by how warm and welcoming the organisation was. Asked how she’s sustained her commitment for so long, she counts off her reasons: “First, I am very lucky that, as a doctor, I have skills which are immediately very useful to the ASRC and its clients. Second, everyone has a fundamental right to good medical care. Third, the ASRC is a fantastic organisation which is very well and inspirationally led. And fourth, everyone in the health team has a very like-minded, caring approach.”

Despite the real challenges she and her colleagues face, Janet takes it in her stride. None of the clients have access to Medicare, she points out, which also shuts them out of the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme for medicines. Most have no work rights and don’t receive Centrelink payments, adding financial hardship on top of the high stress levels many already carry: adverse experiences in their home country, the challenges of their journeys to Australia and long periods of uncertainty waiting on their asylum applications to be processed.

It’s the clients who’ve been waiting years for a visa outcome that Janet feels most for: “It is many years in some cases.” She is heartened whenever a client comes back to share good news with the health team – a visa granted, a new chapter started, a milestone reached. They’re the moments she holds onto.

As a GP in the health team, she sees patients with a range of health issues, from asthma, diabetes, heart disease, infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies, the effects of torture and trauma to mental health issues and musculoskeletal conditions. “You have to be very flexible to work in the Health Program, as there are a lot of unpredictable situations that can arise, and the fact that patients don’t have access to Medicare exacerbates the situation.”

Every health service at the ASRC clinic is provided free of charge. On any given day, the volunteer health team might include doctors, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, immunisation and other nurses – a genuinely broad range of medical skills. Janet says that everyone, volunteers and staff alike, wants to give to others, and they look out for each other in the same caring and nurturing way: “This is really important when a health team member has a patient with particularly challenging issues.”

Janet enjoys spending time with her family, including her two young grandchildren. She has regular hits of tennis, loves bushwalking and finds plenty of enjoyment in reading, cooking and gardening. Underlining her commitment to helping those in need, Janet also works at a centre in St Kilda providing bulk-billed primary healthcare services and psychosocial support to people experiencing homelessness and/or substance-use or dependency.