The final-year medical student has just returned from a six-week intensive medical internship at the Atoifi Adventist Hospital on the island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands and took time off to spend with her family on their Busselton property.

Carolyn elected to do the international elective between her fifth and sixth year of study at the University of Western Australia. She was awarded a scholarship from Adventist Volunteers who operate more than 170 hospitals around the world.

The 80-bed hospital on Malaita is one of only five in the Solomon Islands which has a population of 80,000. It had a male and female ward, an obstetric and paediatric ward and an isolation ward for patients with tuberculosis and leprosy.

Carolyn, who lived on the hospital campus, was constantly “on call”. She was one of only two doctors serving at the time and, with very little in the way of modern amenities, she learnt very quickly to manage as best she could.

“I was a bit shocked at first,” she said. “Things were pretty tough. I was treated like a fully-qualified doctor from the moment I arrived – diagnosing and prescribing.”

Carolyn faced many challenges. For three weeks the island hospital operated without electricity. “This was quite scary,” she said.

“With no imagery or X-ray, all diagnoses had to be done clinically. On one occasion I had to treat a man who had been stabbed, using nothing but a torch for light.”

For Carolyn, who comes from a farming background, practicality and resourcefulness provided the answer to most of these challenges.

“I learnt a great deal about clinical diagnosis – much of it on the run,” she said. “But I also learnt some important life lessons, like how to survive and how to just ‘suck it up’ and get by with what you have.”