Doctors who completed their medical training in Australia can practice to a high clinical standard in well-equipped facilities. They also enjoy high job security. Yet some physicians subsequently decide to practice medicine abroad, perhaps seeking new challenges, a different professional atmosphere, or opportunities to satisfy acute social needs. Medscape News Australia talked to several expatriate Australian physicians about their experiences and the lessons they’ve drawn from them.

Singular Singapore

The temperature in Singapore was around 30 °C, and the humidity was 80%, when Kym Chew, MD, general practitioner trained in Melbourne, spoke to Medscape News Australia about her move from regional Victoria to her new home in Southeast Asia.

What Chew misses most about Australia are the seasons and the cycle of change they bring to clothing, leisure activities, and nature. Chew also misses the “outdoorsy” lifestyle of Australians and the welcoming chitchat and banter. “People tend to ask, ‘How’s your day going?’ It’s a very friendly culture,” she said. “But here [in Singapore], it’s a bit more reserved.”

There’s more emphasis on being a well-rounded person in Australia than in Singapore, where grades tend to equate to success, said Chew. “I became a more holistic person, and I can then apply that to my professional life, and it makes me a better doctor,” she said. “I’m less judgmental, more patient centric.”

Chew was born in Singapore and moved to Australia when she was 16 years old. She is now a permanent Australian resident, but she wasn’t when she enrolled to study medicine at Monash University in Melbourne. As an international student, she was obliged to work in regional or rural areas for 10 years after finishing her training, and so Chew moved to Bendigo and then Gippsland, both in Victoria, to practice medicine.

Chew moved back to Singapore 3 years ago to spend time with her family and has been working for the International Medical Clinic, a general practice that provides healthcare services for expatriates. Her work-life balance is better, and her consultation times are longer than those of other general practitioners in Singapore, who have little time for hobbies and tend to churn through patients, she said.

Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world in part because of its harsh penalties, which include lengthy prison sentences, floggings, and executions. “It’s so safe that you can even let a 10-year-old go on the streets late at night and not worry about them, except for car safety,” said Chew. “I was a forensic doctor for 6 months in Melbourne. I saw all these rape cases all day long,” said Chew. “So, it’s quite prevalent.”

The tax rate in Singapore is capped at 24%, whereas it can reach up to 45% in Australia. This is a major perk of moving overseas, said Chew. Another benefit of living in Singapore is that having domestic help is a cultural norm. “I was brought up by two helpers,” she said.

London Calling

In the early 1990s, Michelle McCarthy, MD, completed her medical degree at the University of New South Wales and her training at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney. She wanted to get a few years of overseas experience before specializing as a gastroenterologist.

She had extended family in London with whom she could stay, so she wrote to all the big hospitals to ask for a job. Liver transplant specialist Roger Williams, MBBS, at King’s College Hospital, London, England (who has since passed away), offered her a position in the liver unit.

McCarthy remembered learning about Wilson’s disease, hemochromatosis, and Budd-Chiari syndrome at university. But during her 5 years practicing medicine in Sydney, she never saw a patient with any of these diseases. “Within about 6 weeks of arriving in London, I must have seen handful of these unusual cases,” she said.

McCarthy loves the music scene in London and the “fabulous” restaurants. “I had lovely weekends away in places like Paris, Venice, Rome, and Milan and skied all around Europe,” she said. “You certainly feel like you’re living in the center of the world in London.”

A few months later, McCarthy met her future husband David, a senior registrar at the hospital. They got married and had three kids, making it harder to uproot themselves and move to Australia, where McCarthy’s parents and brother live.

In the early 2000s, McCarthy started working as a gastroenterologist at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, England, a National Health Service (NHS) hospital just across from the Houses of Parliament. She’s been there ever since. Working for the NHS is “very stressful,” said McCarthy. The population of London is many times larger than that of Sydney, so “you’re constantly under pressure to see lots of patients.”

McCarthy has visited her relatives in Australia almost every year, but it is an expensive trip for a family of five. Even though she hasn’t returned as often as she would have liked, McCarthy feels that she made the right decision by staying in London. “I don’t think, honestly, hand on heart, that I’ve really regretted that,” she said.

McCarthy remains a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and occasionally attends dinners with other expatriate Australian doctors that are organized by the college.

A Serial Expatriate

Andrew Jeremijenko, MD, is an Australian general practitioner with a special interest in occupational and environmental medicine. He describes himself as “the expat doctor who can’t quite come home.”

After studying at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Jeremijenko spent around 8 years working in disaster medicine in Indonesia in the 1990s, 2 years working in Qatar during the pandemic, and 2 years in the United Arab Emirates as an occupational health specialist.

Today, he’s a locum general practitioner based in regional Tasmania. He is also developing a telehealth service called TeleDr and an artificial intelligence tool called RoboDr that supports physicians working with remote patients. Jeremijenko also advocates for environmental health, including issues such as reducing contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. He is considering moving overseas again.

“Living overseas changes you,” said Jeremijenko. “It stretches your worldview, rewires your instincts and replaces certainty with a kind of permanent curiosity. You come home with experiences and words that no one else speaks.”

In Indonesia, Jeremijenko worked with International SOS (then called Air Evacuation Asia) and became “the person who flies into chaos and tries to bring order,” he said. His team responded to disease outbreaks, floods, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks. “Working through those crises taught me to stay calm, lead under pressure, and build systems that could function even when everything around you is uncertain,” said Jeremijenko.

He moved to Qatar in 2019 to work in occupational medicine with the country’s main not-for-profit healthcare provider, Hamad Medical Corporation. “It was intense,” he said. “I’ll never forget standing on the front lines, coordinating [SARS-CoV-2] testing for tens of thousands of workers,” said Jeremijenko.

He moved to Abu Dhabi in 2023 to head occupational health for M42, a local healthcare provider. In this role, he focused on integrating artificial intelligence into tuberculosis screening and saw how swiftly the United Arab Emirates could implement national-level programs. “Australia has exceptional clinicians, but bureaucracy often slows innovation,” he said.

Returning home after years abroad made Jeremijenko realize how small Australia can sometimes feel. “The longer you live that [expatriate] life, the harder it becomes to slot back into the neat, predictable rhythm of Australian medicine,” he said. “There’s a loneliness that comes with being a serial expat. You belong everywhere and nowhere. And perhaps the hardest part isn’t leaving again; it’s realizing that after all these years, you were never really coming back.”

Chew, McCarthy, and Jeremijenko reported having no relevant financial relationships.

Felicity Nelson is a freelance science journalist based in Sydney.