Sitting down with two of the students, it is clear to see the passion they have for medicine. 

Marguerite Thomas and Kirbie Storrier have spent the past decade studying medicine and are excited to be spending their final year in Lithgow. 

Both girls chose Lithgow as their first preference, wanting to get experience working in a rural hospital. 

"I wanted to go to one of the rural clinical schools and I really like this area," Mrs Thomas said. 

Being from a country town, Miss Storrier said she always knew she wanted to do at least a year in rural medicine. 

"I want to go rural after this so I thought it would be a good idea to do it, a good step for me," she said. 

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Miss Storrier said that rural placement was more practically hands on, with more one on one teaching compared to the city hospitals. 

Mrs Thomas agreed and said from a medical perspective you step up a lot more then you would in a big tertiary hospital because there's more junior doctors, training doctors and medical students all jostling to get experience there. 

"Whereas here, it's like 'someone needs to put in a cannula and it needs to be you'," she said. 

"Without the extra competition to try and learn, the scope of your practise expands a lot."

The students spend four days a week in the local hospital and one day a week in the classroom. 

Both the students are keen to do rural generalist medicine after they graduate and have found coming to Lithgow a huge benefit for their careers. 

"The majority of doctors who work in the hospital are rural generalist so we have exposure to what that kind of life is like," Mrs Thomas said. 

Miss Storrier said one of the reasons she came to Lithgow was because she knew she would learn a lot. 

"We need to know how to be independent as interns next year and be able to assess situations quite quickly and know when to call for help, which will be 99 percent of the time, every time, but that's something Lithgow has to offer us," she said. 

Mrs Thomas said the students are now at a stage where they have a good intellectual knowledge of the basics and now it is about trying to apply that theory into practise. 

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Another thing the two girls want to get out of their year in Lithgow is to be immersed in the community. 

"I want to learn about people and their lives and what it's like to live here, every rural town is different and everyone has something different in their lives happening," Miss Storrier said. 

"This is predominately a coal mining town, whereas I'm from a farming community, so it's nice to be able to have a different experience and know what different communities face." 

The students have been here for five weeks and have already faced some challenges. 

"We did our ICU (Intensive Care Unit) rotation first and that was quite confronting and it was emotionally challenging," Miss Storrier said. 

"I guess you go into it thinking it's going to be more mentally challenging in terms of the actual medicine, but when you are dealing with real people and real families at the end of the day it can be really sad or really happy and I think that is something that medicine offers to you as a career."

According to the students, the staff at Lithgow hospital have been very inclusive and friendly to them all. 

"The nurses have been really patient and we rely on them a lot," Mrs Thomas said. 

"They are the corner stone of health and they have been amazing, I can't think of a single situation where we haven't been helped by the staff, they are happy to teach us," Miss Storrier said. 

The students said they would really like to get to know the community and its' people. 

"I would like to experience all the wonderful things in the area, and to just get as much clinical experience as I can," Mrs Thomas said. 

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The girls also wanted to thank the community for the support they have been given thus far. 

"Thank you to the community for being so embracing of us, every person we've come across in the hospital, whether that be staff or patients have been extremely happy for us to be there and very patient with us, which has been amazing," Miss Storrier said. 

"I think thats a huge testament to Lithgow as a whole, they are very embracing of new people which is lovely." 

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