Primary Care Quality and Innovation Awards 2022

Dr Andrew Kwong left Sydney in early 1979 with his wife and their one-year-old daughter to set up a general practice in Wyoming just north of Gosford and has been proactively caring for the region ever since.

He was one of the longest serving admitting GPs to the Gosford District Hospital and for a while, the only GP servicing the region from Wyoming to Wyong, his surgery opening seven days a week to care for the local community.

Among many achievements, Dr Kwong helped establish Wyoming’s first retirement villages, namely the Adelene Village and the Henry Kendal Village, advising on safety and medical services issues. He continues to care for the RACF residents seven days a week and home visits to house-bound elderly and the physically disabled.

Dr Kwong is an outstanding clinician and diagnostic doctor who has devoted more than half of his life to caring for the community and his patients, many who have been with him for decades.

Dr Nicholas Boyd joined Moree’s Associate Medical Practice as a GP Registrar in February 2002 and has never left. He is the longest serving doctor in Moree providing care to his patients in the practice, the local aged care facility, and the First Nations community, ensuring they have the best medical care to maintain their health and wellbeing.

In addition to Care Plans, TCAs, and Aboriginal Health Plans, Dr Boyd performs minor procedures, provides diabetes care, heart care and general health care all within the surgery. He excels in doctor/patient care with compassion, professionalism, and humour. Patients are comfortable disclosing their health problems with him and have confidence in his treatment.

For 20 years, Dr Boyd has also participated in the Moree District Hospital VMO roster. He provides GP work in the emergency department, on-call anaesthetics, and surgical lists twice a week. This includes emergency caesarean sections and trauma. Theatre staff state that he excels at resuscitation of newborns and neonates – always in a calm and reassuring manner.

Dr Terry Parkin graduated from medical school in South Africa in 1981 where she worked as a GP for 17 years before moving to Australia.

Dr Parkin continues to advocate for multidisciplinary coordinated care, putting patients at the centre of her work. This is reflected in her work for the Newcastle Community Mental Health Team who she began working with in 2000 as a psychiatry registrar. After passing the fellowship exams she moved to work part time in general practice, with a part-time VMO role in the mental health team. She continues to work in both disciplines, developing a unique insight into the challenges and internal workings of both systems.

Alongside her GP role, Dr Parkin has worked at GP Access from its beginnings. She joined a network of local GPs involved in developing programs for training local GP registrars, forming the Valley-to Coast initiative for General Practice Education and was instrumental in establishing a 6-month post for a GP registrar within the Community Mental Health Team.

The recently retired Dr Delma Mullins has been a dedicated and passionate GP in the Upper Hunter region, where she has worked tirelessly for the past 30 years.

After graduating from Sydney University, she continually educated herself based on current community needs, going above and beyond to help in any way that she could. On identifying a shortfall in the community for specialised paediatric care, Dr Mullins sought to study a post graduate degree in paediatric care. Dr Mullins further added a Masters in Medical Humanities, and a Diploma in Child Health to her qualifications.

Basing herself in the Upper Hunter, over her career she has provided paediatric medical care, women’s health, mental health and a highly regarded general practitioner for the Butterfly Foundation assisting patients with eating disorders.

During the COVID pandemic, what was an incredibly indecisive and conflicting period, Dr Mullins was a source of stability and fact, setting up the Practice in readiness to support the community and was instrumental in establishing immunisation clinics and prioritising all immunocompromised patients.

Dr Richard Abbott is a well-respected proceduralist GP who has practised at Scone Medical Practice and provided obstetric and anaesthetic care to the patients of Scone Scott Memorial Hospital for over three decades.

In 2018, he was honoured for his long-standing service to the community of Scone at the prestigious NSW Rural Medical Service Awards. Dr Abbott finds the time in his busy clinic schedule to provide GP Locum relief for the Royal Flying Doctors Service in Broken Hill and providing service to regional and remote communities across NSW.

Dr Abbott was formerly a state-wide Director of NSW Generalist Training Program with NSW HETI and President of the Rural Doctors Association of NSW. He is currently a conjoint lecturer at the University of Newcastle where he offers theoretical training to aspiring doctors.

After more than 35 years of service, Dr Abbott is still working and continues to provide high quality medical care wherever he may be.