Ophthalmologist Dr Ashish Agar’s commitment to mentoring and supporting rural medical students has been recognised through the RAMUS Mentor of the Year Award for 2017.
RAMUS, the Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Scholarship Scheme, assists selected students with a rural background to study medicine at university. As part of the Scheme, all scholarship holders have a rural doctor as a mentor. The mentoring programme gives scholars opportunities for exposure to rural practice and aims to reinforce the scholar’s ties to rural and regional Australia and to provide support to scholars during their medical studies. Each year, RAMUS scholars are invited to nominate exceptional mentors for the Award.
Dr Agar was nominated by RAMUS scholar Sascha Spencer, now a final year medical student at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He works as an ophthalmologist both in Sydney and in rural locations all over New South Wales.
Sascha said: “He is the best doctor I have ever worked with. I was lucky to have him as my supervisor last year for the UNSW research year, and because our project was a clinical project, I shadowed him for the whole year at his clinics.”
“As a medical student sitting in on clinics, we learn from not just medical knowledge, but also about the kinds of doctors we'd like to be, or sometimes behaviours to avoid. Ashish was kind and thoughtful in every consultation of the hundreds, possibly thousands, that I sat in for. He was never judgemental, always took the time to explain to his patients anything they wanted to know, and always made sure they were comfortable and actively involved in their own care. I lost count of how many of his patients, both in Sydney and Broken Hill, made a point of telling me how much they loved him, and how lucky they felt to have him as their doctor.”
