For the newly appointed Director of Rural Generalist Training and Development at Mersey Community Hospital, rural generalist medicine is not only "the best job in the world" - it's a vital resource for remote communities.

As the new training program takes on its first round of students, Dr Street said Tasmania was uniquely placed to upskill young doctors to meet service deficits in rural health.

"We have an opportunity to do something really different here," Dr Street said. "It's a chance to really showcase other [medical] specialties and also showcase the procedural ones in a way that the other states haven't yet done, or thought of".

Rural generalists, Dr Street said, are the swiss-army knives of medicine. On one hand, they work as General Practitioners and primary health workers for rural communities.

On the other, they're the obstetricians, gynaecologists, paediatricians, anaesthetists or mental health workers for areas that can't access metropolitan health services. They fill the essential gaps that may be present in rural health services - an ongoing issue across Australia.

After having worked across rural New South Wales and Queensland, as a locum GP travelling the country in a caravan, and in some of the most remote parts of the Northern Territory, she has taken on the role of building up the next generation of Tasmania's rural health specialists.

Beginning in pharmaceutical marketing, Dr Street said she could have made a comfortable living in the role. But there was something missing.

"I didn't see that it was helping people; that there was a genuine good that I was achieving," she said.

It's an attitude that has shaped her life and career.

Never one to take the easy route or step down from a challenge, Dr Street made three attempts at passing the medical school exam. Undeterred, she would go on to train as an obstetrician, which she described as her "everything".

"It's an incredible privilege to look after mums and babies, and an even bigger privilege to do that in the rural and remote areas where access is so much more limited," she said.

As part of her training, she moved to Mackay, Queensland. From there, she moved down to Mudgee, NSW, and then to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Each new location provided a varied and challenging new environment, each more remote than the last. But despite the challenge, the strength of rural generalist pathway, she said, was in its ability to meet the unique needs of each community.

"The great thing about rural generalist medicine is there are no two doctors with the same skill set, doing the the same things, in the same region,"

"It will depend on the doctor and their interests, and what their community's needs are".

Dr Street said it was a challenge, but one that needed to be met in order to help address growing shortages of healthcare access as populations outside of metropolitan centres grew.

"It's not just managing the wide variety of patient presentations and absolutely anything that walks through the door. It's like doing it skating on ice because you don't have the imaging equipment, the blood testing equipment, the resources, or the hands on deck that you would have in a big centre managing that emergency".

As commonwealth and state health departments reevaluate the role of rural training pathways and regional health services, the future of rural generalism looks promising.

The National Rural Health Commissioner has commenced an application for rural generalist medicine to be recognised by the Australian Medical College as an official subspecialty within General Practice, and the Tasmanian government continues to invest in rural generalist pathways for medicine students.

And with the announcement of the new Rural Medical Workforce Centre at Mersey Community Hospital - to be completed next year - Dr Street said Tasmania would be able to bring health services closer to the people who need it the most.

"It's important that we show people early on in their careers what's possible as a rural doctor,"

"We know that if we do that, it's more likely that our doctors will move, and remain, rural".