‘He needed intensive care and a team of specialists. He got me instead’: an outback doctor on treating patients a long way from help (opens in new tab)

After working in post-conflict zones, Damien Brown thought he was ready for anything. Then he moved to the Northern Territory, where his 20-bed hospital had to serve an area the size of Norway“It can be harder than aid work,” a colleague cautioned me when I first applied to work in the remote Northern Territory. I’d just returned from six months with Médecins Sans Frontières, volunteering in a corner of Africa that was recovering from decades of civil war, so I’d assumed that I’d be ready for...