FIVE Hunter surgeons who "get along like a song" have turned their dream into a reality with the opening of a new medical centre that is already turning heads, starting conversations and bringing people together.
The new home of Hunter ENT and NextSense among other healthcare providers, "KONARA" officially opened at Broadmeadow on Friday.
But thanks to the large Aboriginal artworks "draping" the building, ear, nose and throat surgeon Professor Kelvin Kong said it had already brought "joy, pride and happiness" to the community.
"The problem we have often with Aboriginal health is that it's often cast with a negative narrative of closing the gap, and poor health outcomes, and always being at the bottom of the pile," he said. "So a new building with a theme of excellence and positivity is really powerful for the community."
Professor Kong, Australia's first Aboriginal surgeon and one of the doctors behind its development, said when his colleagues at Hunter ENT outgrew their space at the hospital campus, they wanted to create something special of their own.
With his colleagues - Associate Professor Rob Eisenberg, Dr Toby Corlette, Dr Daron Cope and Dr Johnson Huang - Professor Kong said they had a goal to establish a unified range of health services that could work together to improve patient experiences.
"As soon as you finish medicine, often you can get into this business mode and you lose sight of the reason you studied medicine," he said. "The reason we studied it was because we wanted to be able to give back and help society, and contribute to the fabric of society, and this is one way we can do that. And being on Aboriginal land, it was very important for us to represent that too."
Professor Kong said KONARA means '"people gather" in the local Awabakal language.
In this case, surgeons, hearing and allied health services and not-for-profit NDIS provider NextSense - formerly known as the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children - had gathered together to provide a holistic health service to the community.
"Having those kind of services together means the kids we are looking after with complex syndromes, complex hearing and visual impairment can just come to the one place," Professor Kong said. "If a patient of theirs comes in and there are some issues, they can literally walk across the corridor and one of us can take a quick look to save these families some time. We hope this centre brings a real strength of pride in our local mob, but also a real strength of pride in our non indigenous community. It's in our own backyard and we should all be embracing that and being proud of that."
