Every day, Sophie Cargill sees people who have travelled hours to access healthcare.
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Ms Cargill is a physiotherapist at Dubbo Hospital.
At the Dubbo Show at the weekend she was named as Dubbo's 2024 Young Woman.
In her new position the 22-year-old is hoping to advocate for the need for better heathcare in rural and regional areas. It's something she has been passionate about since she was young, having grown up in Braidwood, outside Canberra.
Ms Cargill said in Braidwood there were a couple of physios in town, but to access any other allied health professionals people had to travel for more than an hour.
"That's fine for some people but a lot of the community couldn't do that kind of travel. It was an obvious need in our community and I know out here it's definitely similar," she said.
It was one of the reasons she became a physio.
![Dubbo Young Woman Sophie Cargill (right) with runner-up Tegan Fern at the Dubbo Show. Picture by Amy McIntyre Dubbo Young Woman Sophie Cargill (right) with runner-up Tegan Fern at the Dubbo Show. Picture by Amy McIntyre](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/szmxUse7pKRunEdvcxFUnw/1dc161d1-fdd0-4bf9-91d5-1ec97eb2d2dd.jpeg/r0_0_8256_5504_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Ms Cargill has been working as a physio in Dubbo since January.
"We see patients coming from Bourke, Lightning Ridge, Cobar and they're coming for three hours just for an outpatient appointment or a follow-up from a fracture, or a surgery, which is just wild," she said.
"Then obviously after surgery we want to send people home as soon as we can but that's not always possible because they would still have to travel that couple of hours for follow up."
It was "insane" how much time and money patients had to invest to get to appointments, she said.
The Young Woman said there were so many physios in Australia and she would love for them to work in regional areas, where they could swap an 1.5 hour commute to work for a three minute one.
While for now Ms Cargill plans to stay in Dubbo, she said in the future she wouldn't mind heading farther west to a rural area or going south to be closer to home.
"I'd love to be able to provide that service to a community that hasn't had access to basically allied health professionals," she said.
As well as being part of the Young Woman competition, at this year's Dubbo Show Ms Cargill was also joined the cattle committee.
Her dad was always heavily involved in the local show society and having grown up on a sheep and cattle farm, Ms Cargill said she had shown cattle for the past eight or 10 years.
"It's something that I've grown to love. I don't have any cows here that I can show myself but it was a way to get involved and support he community and still be involved in that show side of things," she said.
Having been named as Dubbo's Young Woman, Ms Cargill will then go onto the zone finals and if she's successful there, the state finals at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.