He’s been a very popular doctor and a stalwart in the Cloncurry community well over a decade but sadly it’s time for Dr Bryan Connor to move on.
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The North West Star caught up with Dr Connor at Cloncurry’s first parkrun last Saturday where he took part walking, or more accurately running fast with his dog Loulou to finish sixth, joking that he loved parkruns and Cloncurry was finally getting one just as he leaves.
“I must say I’m leaving with a great deal of regret because this has been my home town for over 11 years,” Dr Connor said.
“My partner Chris and I have worked tirelessly at the beginning to set up Flinders Medical Centre and get running a top tier, high quality, training general practice.”
Dr Connor said he was in the position where he was no longer running the practice.
“I was offered a contract that I didn’t think was in best interest to sign so I didn’t sign the contract,” he said.
“The handover happened quickly without much consultation with myself which meant that I’m no longer working there and I’m sad about that.”
However, Dr Connor preferred to concentrate on the positives of his time in Cloncurry and look forward to the future.
“I moved to Richmond in 1999 and when I came here in 2005, my partner Chris said he would give me ten years for what is the pinnacle of my career and what I’d always wanted to be which was a real community GP with a hospital,” he said.
“In all fairness, we’ve been here two years longer, so this was an obligation for me to fulfill my obligations to my partner to move somewhere, as he put it ‘cooler and greener’.”
However Dr Connor admitted he did not know where that “cooler and greener” place was yet.
“We still have a house in Cloncurry so we’ll have to see where we go from here,” he said.
Dr Connor said he was leaving the practice in safe hands.
“The community is not being left without a medical service – the most important thing is the staff and the doctors in Flinders and all the patients they look after,” he said.
“I know that I’m leaving two of my former registrars Dr Leonie Fromberg and Dr Cameron Hoare as doctors I have trained up and doctors who are excellent rural generalists and those two will carry on and look after my patients.”
Dr Connor said he was grateful to the town for allowing him become the family doctor he always wanted to be.
“I look after people, the grandparents, the parents, the kids, the pregnant ladies, everybody,” he said.
This years is Dr Connor’s 25th anniversary of his graduation as a doctor in 1992.
“I’m going to have a few months off recouping and resting ,” he said.
“But I must say Cloncurry is home, the house I’ve live here is the house I’ve lived in longest in my entire life and I’m sad to be leaving – though I leave it in good hands.”