Our Medicine review: Season 2 is all about gripping stories and competence porn

Australia’s health gap is a national shame. Per the most recent statistics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders born between 2020 and 2022 have a life expectancy more than eight years lower than non-Indigenous Australians.

Further, as Leah Purcell’s narration in the opening scene of Our Medicine Season 2 tells us, ‘Indigenous Australians still suffer some of the shortest life expectancies in the developed world.’

Our Medicine puts a human face on these statistics, following a handful of Indigenous medical practitioners across the country. After a successful six-episode first season, it returns with eight new episodes that again combine interviews and fly-on-the-wall footage. The result is a powerful snapshot of an under-resourced system that highlights the determination and expertise of those working to make it better.

The figures on the frontline

One of the most magnetic figures in the series is George Fennemore, a softly-spoken paramedic. We first see him attending to Hazel, a patient who has apparently suffered a Transient Ischaemic Attack (TIA) or ‘mini-stroke’, which temporarily blocks the flow of blood to the brain. To watch him work is to see a consummate pro in action, both highly competent and unfailingly empathetic.

Later, we see him and his cadet, Rob Minniecon, provide first aid and ambulance transport to Jade, a four-year-old girl who is stoically nursing a broken arm after coming off her bike. Fennemore, armed with some gentle humour and a bag of red lolly frogs, quickly connects with his young patient.

ScreenHub: Our Medicine, Season 1 review

In other scenes, the action is positively hair-raising, like when a patient turns blue in a waiting room or when a young man is airlifted to hospital with severe neck injuries and uncontrolled bleeding.

Similarly, when Uncle Leonard’s cataract operation, already an incredibly delicate procedure, goes dangerously awry, his heart rate dips to a low level and his pacemaker fails to kick in. The medical team need to keep calm and think quickly. Anyone who lapped up the ‘competence porn’ of The Pitt will be transfixed by the real-life drama captured here.

Meeting the next generation

Our Medicine does a sterling job capturing the seesawing rhythms of life in medicine. Well-chosen dramatic moments are counterweighed by snippets of routine health check-ups and scenes where practitioners find snatches of downtime to reflect, like Associate Professor Kris Rallah-Baker discussing the bigger picture of his profession.

Rallah-Baker is the first and only Indigenous ophthalmologist and passionately advocates for more First Nations people to train in his field. We see him mentoring Aiden Wu, an enthusiastic first-year medical student who is spending time in the Darwin practice and looks to have an aptitude for the work.

The way a new generation of First Nations practitioners benefit from their connection to culture is a running theme in Our Medicine. Initially, fourth-year medical student Keisha Calyun feels out of her depth running a consult with a young patient, but grows in confidence when she reframes it as a yarn rather than a formal interaction. A sense of connection to her ancestors also gives her purpose and motivation when she faces setbacks at exam time.  

We also hear from ‘Monty’ Chugg, a young doctor working in Cairns, who is nearing the time when she will have to decide which branch of medicine to specialise in. She says, ‘Growing up, I really struggled to openly identify as a Palawa woman’ but as we see, she has found that embracing her culture helps forge connections with her patients.

Demonstrating the value of culturally-sensitive medicine

While it never labours its political points, Our Medicine makes a powerful argument for a more inclusive and culturally sensitive health system, one that can incorporate First Nations knowledge of bush medicine and natural pain relief.

To this end, we see a team from the Akeyulerre Healing Centre collect llpengke on country and use the plant to create medicines, including muscle balms, using traditional processes. Their products are the first hospital-approved bush medicine in Australia, but they may be the first of a new wave reintegrated into traditional medicine.

The series goes on to elucidate how health outcomes intersect with socioeconomic circumstances, including a disconnection from country and distrust of government-affiliated health institutions.

On Palm Island – which was used as a penal settlement for First Nations people for decades – initiatives like community-owned health centres and Indigenous liaison officers, who can help patients interact with the system, are promising steps towards a more equitable system.

While it would have been easy for Our Medicine to settle for simple backdrops of waiting rooms and hospital wards, the visuals are often stunning. The medical action is interspersed with aerial shots of sweeping coastlines, roads flanked by red dirt and glimpses of painterly sunsets that give the viewer a sense of the locations, often in remote communities with a very different feel to Australia’s urban centres.

Our Medicine is a vital piece of work, simultaneously a gripping anthology of human-interest stories and an illuminating and hopeful examination of an ongoing inequality in Australian society.

Season 2 of Our Medicine hits NITV on 15 March, and SBS and SBS On Demand from 26 March.

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