Clyde Ronan is a Yarrawonga-based doctor who has been in general practice for 40 years.
He says he has been thinking about retiring for a while while he still enjoys the work.
My days are pretty numbered, according to Ronan.
I'm in the twilight of my career and I should hand over the reins to younger doctors. With a shortage of doctors in regional and rural Australia, those plans appear a long way from materialising.
The problem started with recruitment, according to Ronan.
It's a problem that is facing regional communities across the country, and it's getting worse.
Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Megan Belot said that the loss of GPs was more dire in regional areas than in metropolitan areas, and that an urgent overhaul of the whole general practice system was needed.
She said that we're very concerned about what the next few months will hold for rural and remote Australia.
We already know that it takes weeks to get into your GP and we're seeing sicker patients coming to our hospitals. It is really concerning. She said that the exodus could be attributed to a combination of fatigue, burnout and not enough junior doctors coming through to replace those leaving.
Some regional areas are offering huge salary packages in the hope of attracting doctors to communities in desperate need of medical services.
In South Australia, the health department recently offered an annual salary of $475,763 and $752,224 for a general practitioner in the state's Mallee region, but most local health authorities don't have the capacity to offer such lucrative incentives.
Dr Ronan said his practice, which has four other GPs, was understaffed and always had been.
If they were up and left, I'd be on my own and the practice would be unviable, he said.
We need to retain the doctors we have got. Dr Ronan said that more than half of the rural doctor workforce consisted of people who came from overseas, and the local industry was too dependent on international medical graduates to fill gaps.
There was a sudden urgency to recruit local doctors after international borders closed due to the Pandemic but the numbers could not be met, causing shortages in metropolitan areas and worsening the already crippled workforce in the regions.
Dr Ronan said that more focus needed to be placed on the distribution of the workforce, by encouraging more doctors from metropolitan areas to relocate to the regions.
She said that this time has to be the time for change otherwise our communities will suffer.
She wants to make general practice more attractive for young doctors, from updating bulk-billing and creating better working conditions and improving support for GPs.
Junior doctors coming through want to stay in the hospital sector and make sure they have their leave entitlements and educational entitlements and all the things that come with staying in the public sector.
We want to be treated on the same equity as our metro counterparts who are working in the hospital sector.