Dr Justine Cain did not follow the plan. She studied science and law, worked in government fisheries policy, sat the GAMSAT on a hunch and has spent the years since weaving through general practice, emergency medicine, Aboriginal health and three international assignments with MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

In this episode of It Takes Heart, she makes a compelling case for the portfolio career and for trusting the winding path.

Medicine Was Always the Plan, Eventually

Justine’s route into medicine was anything but direct. She completed an undergraduate degree in science and law, spent time working for the government on Torres Strait fisheries policy and then decided she wanted something more. She sat the GAMSAT, got in and never looked back.

What followed was an internship she did not plan for, a sabbatical she definitely needed and a GP career that taught her as much about what she wanted as what she did not.

A Sabbatical, Not a Gap Year

After completing her residency on the Gold Coast, Justine found herself surrounded by peers who had already mapped out their specialties. She had not. Rather than force a decision, she did what she describes as what “responsible adults do” and took a year off.

She went backpacking. Volunteer work in Mexico, a bit of travel, a lot of thinking. She came back and chose general practice because she liked the breadth of it, seeing a bit of everything, working across different presentations and populations. But something was missing.

She gravitated towards an Aboriginal Medical Service in Northgate, Brisbane, which gave her back the team environment she had been craving. Then she returned to emergency medicine and eventually, she applied to MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

The Seed Was Planted in Medical School

Justine first heard about Doctors Without Borders as a medical student, when another doctor spoke about their work in Chad. She filed it away and spent the next decade building toward it.

By 2019, she felt ready. Not just technically, but in the broader sense: she had travelled extensively, worked in low-resource settings, started studying tropical medicine and public health and understood what it meant to be far from home without the comforts she was used to.

The first assignment required a minimum nine-month commitment. Hers was in Lebanon.

Lebanon: Primary Care in a Crisis

The work in Lebanon was not what most people picture when they think of MSF. There were no trauma bays or frontline field hospitals. Instead, Justine worked across four standalone primary healthcare clinics in the Bekaa Valley, serving Palestinian and Syrian refugees alongside vulnerable Lebanese communities, all free of charge.

The focus was non-communicable disease: diabetes, hypertension, asthma, kidney disease, epilepsy. Patients came in, had point-of-care testing, saw a doctor, collected medication from the on-site pharmacy and returned every three to six months. There were social workers, psychologists and education sessions on lifestyle and chronic disease management.