A husband and wife doctor duo recognised for 25 years of service

The company man, a professional working in one place for the bulk of their career is a fading memory and an analogy that few younger generations would recognise.

However, at the Launceston General Hospital, not one, but two doctors have been plying their craft for more than two decades, steadily refining their skills, driven by a shared passion for medicine.

READ MORE: COVID-19 booster shots available at local pharmacies

On Tuesday, the Tasmanian Health Service recognised Doctors Hung Nguyen and Joanne Campbell for 25 years of service.

For any doctor to reach the milestone would be a significant accomplishment, but for the husband and wife team, sharing the achievement together was all the more meaningful.

Sitting in a small cafe next door to the LGH, Doctors Nguyen and Campbell are as different as they are the same.

It's a quality Doctor Hung said has sustained the couple.

"You don't want to live in an echo chamber," he said. "Joanne and I can have different opinions, we can see things from different positions, but that's not a bad thing."

While both doctors are at the top of their fields, their chosen specialities sit at opposite ends of the medical spectrum.

While Dr Nguyen is a surgeon, his wife Dr Campbell works as an endocrinologist, with both recalling how much the medical field has changed throughout their careers.

READ MORE: Jewish community shaken by targeted, racist attack

For both doctors, the reduction in invasive clinical and surgical practices has stood out as a significant change in the industry, which has led to better patient outcomes.

"When I started, if you had diabetes you had to prick your finger and it was all very difficult," Dr Campbell said.

"Now we've got these patches where children who are born today will never do a finger prick.

"They can be monitored remotely by their parents at school through the cloud, which is just absolutely unbelievable compared to when I started."

Dr Nguyen said changes to technology and training had seen high-risk patients undergo surgeries with less risk than they would have done a decade ago.

"Minimally invasive surgery has really changed the face of it and enabled us to operate on patients who are older and more infirm than ever before," he said.

"Certainly when I started, if you were over 80 or had anything wrong with you, that was it, goodbye, but now we can operate on patients with bowel cancer into their 90s and they'll survive, go home and go back to their normal life, which is quite amazing"

Dr Campbell said the key to the couple's longevity as doctors and spouses was by taking a pragmatic approach to both.

"We have a five-year plan, every five years we sit down and say what we are going to do," she said.

"For the last five, five years, we've said we're just staying."

READ MORE: Man escapes hotel quarantine in Launceston

Dr Nguyen said having a plan provided the opportunity to reevaluate what the couple wanted to do.

"Every few years we kind of make a pact that every five years we'll sit down and talk and decide whether or not we stay or go," he said.

Dr Campbell said the growth at the LGH over the past two decades was one of the reasons the two had chosen to stay.

"The hospital has been good in that if you want to progress and build things up they're happy to support you - which is a good thing," she said.

Ultimately, it was a passion for the regional lifestyle and raising a family that contributed to the doctors remaining in Launceston for as long as they have - with neither expecting it to change any time soon.

For Dr Campbell, Tasmania has always been home.

After graduating from St Mary's College in Hobart she enrolled at the University of Tasmania before going on to work at the Royal Hobart Hospital.

Conversely, Vietnamese-born Dr Nguyen came to Australia as a 16-year-old, after spending six months in a refugee camp in Malaysia.

He recalls when he immigrated to Australia there was less stigma around refugees.

"The settlement program back then was that you get interviewed by various countries and whoever offers you a place you just sort of accepted that, and so an Australian person interviewed us and accepts us," he said.

Upon arrival, his family settled in Armidale NSW where Dr Nguyen attended Duval High School before graduating from Sydney University Medical School.

READ MORE: Buy local boom brings business back to Northern Tasmania

It was his time growing up in Armidale that reinforced his passion for rural living, explaining that even from a young age he knew he wanted to live and work in a regional community.

In a career that has seen medicine change and evolve, it's hard for the pair to identify a single event that defined their careers, but that's not to say there haven't been memorable moments in either's career.

For Dr Nguyen, he recalls a dramatic turn performing surgery on a man who was shot in the heart and survived.

"This young man was shot in the heart, there was blood squirting out everywhere and he was going to die if we didn't do anything, so we brought him in," he said.

"There was no cardiothoracic surgeon and there was no neurosurgeon, for that sort of thing you had to go to Hobart."

He said the event was particularly memorable because of the drama surrounding the incident, but also because the man survived and was able to identify the individual who shot him.

It's an amusing story and one that highlights his skill as a surgeon, although not told for that purpose.

At 59, Dr Nguyen is approaching the twilight of his surgical career, but seems nonplussed. A skilled pianist and photographer, the doctor has other interests he can pursue.

"For a lot of people their work is all-consuming and all-encompassing and you never seem to know enough, and you never seem to do enough, there's always more and it's very easy to kind of get completely absorbed in it," he said.

"If something bad happens you can't be anything else because you haven't taken time to develop being something else."

At 57 Dr Campbell says she has no plans to slow down, with the current public health emergency and a growing LGH there is still too much to do.

Nevertheless, neither plans to step away from medicine any time soon, and with the anniversary of their five-year plan coinciding with their 25 years of service, Dr Campbell says the pair may be a little too comfortable for a big move.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:

Follow us on Google News: The Examiner