All Medicare-eligible consultations are bulk billed for patients with a valid Medicare card. Some items, including privately purchased vaccines and consumables, attract a fee.
Hearing, vision, lung function, blood pressure and a physical assessment against the demands of the job. What the employer sees, what stays with you, and how long to allow.
Around Muswellbrook, a pre-employment medical is often the last thing standing between a job offer and a start date, which makes people understandably nervous about it. Most of that nervousness comes from not knowing what is being assessed or what the employer will be told.
A pre-employment medical is a job-matching exercise. The question being answered is narrow: can this person perform the inherent requirements of this particular role safely, and is there anything that needs adjusting or monitoring?
That is why the content varies so much. An assessment for a role involving heavy manual work, respirator use and night shift looks very different from one for an office-based role. The employer's own form drives what gets done.
Allow a long appointment. This is not a ten-minute consultation, and rushing it helps nobody.
This is the part people most want to know. The employer receives an opinion about fitness for the role — typically fit, fit with stated adjustments, or not fit for specified duties — along with anything they are legally required to be told.
They do not receive your medical history. Your consultation, your diagnoses and your medicines remain confidential in the ordinary way. If something is found that needs following up for your own health rather than for the job, that comes back to you and to your regular GP.
Coal mine workers in New South Wales are covered by a separate scheme run by Coal Services, and it is not the same thing as a general pre-employment medical.
From 1 January 2026, Order 45 replaced Order 43. It moved to a single risk-based assessment model valid for up to three years, made chest imaging to ILO standards a mandatory requirement, and made medical review mandatory where a condition may affect safe work. Existing Order 43 assessments are only recognised if you have not changed employers — an Order 43 does not transfer to a new employer even if it is recent.
These assessments must be carried out by a provider approved under the Coal Services scheme. If your employer has asked for an Order 45 assessment, check with reception first about where to have it done.
Pre-employment medicals are not a Medicare service. They attract a fee and are not bulk billed. In many cases the employer pays it directly — check with them first, and tell reception what the arrangement is when you book.
The report answers one question: can this person do this job safely?
It is not a summary of your health, and your employer does not receive one.General information only. This article is general health information for anyone who finds it useful. It is not advice about your own situation and it does not replace a consultation with a doctor who knows you. If you are worried about a symptom, book an appointment or call us on (02) 6530 7404. Last reviewed 29 July 2026.
Tell reception which employer and which form when you book — the assessment and the time needed vary a great deal between them. Bring photo ID, your glasses, and a list of your medicines.
Bulk billed with a valid Medicare card · Mon–Fri 8:00am–5:00pm · Muswellbrook Fair, Rutherford Road.
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Rotating shifts do measurable things to sleep, appetite and mood. The practical adjustments that help, and the signs it has tipped into something worth an appointment.
A great many people around Muswellbrook work a roster rather than a week. Mining, health, emergency services, transport, hospitality and agriculture all run on hours that the human body was not designed around, and most people who do it will tell you they have simply got used to it.
Some of that is true. Some of it is a description of what tolerating something looks like from the inside.
Your body runs on an internal clock set largely by light. It drives when you feel alert, when you feel sleepy, when your body temperature falls, when hormones are released, and how your body handles food. Night work asks you to be awake at the low point of that cycle and asleep at the high point.
The clock does shift somewhat, but for most people it never fully inverts — partly because on days off you go back to living in daylight, which resets it again. That is why the first night shift of a swing is usually the hardest, and why the recovery day afterwards rarely feels like enough.
The practical consequences are day sleep that is shorter and lighter than night sleep, a stomach that behaves oddly at 3am, and a mood that is harder to hold steady.
If you change one thing, change your light exposure.
Caffeine works, and it is a reasonable tool. The mistake is timing. It has a long half-life — a coffee at 3am is still meaningfully in your system when you are trying to sleep at 8am. Have it early in the shift, and stop at least six hours before you intend to sleep.
Alcohol is the common self-prescription for day sleep, and it is the one that does the most damage. It shortens the time it takes to fall asleep and then fragments the back half of your sleep, so you wake early and unrefreshed. Using it regularly to get to sleep after night shift is a pattern worth breaking early.
A short nap before a night shift — twenty minutes to half an hour — is genuinely useful. A long nap late in the day is not.
This deserves its own heading because it is the part that kills people. Drowsy driving after a night shift is a serious hazard, and the drive home is when people are at their least alert and most convinced they are fine.
If you are microsleeping, drifting, or cannot remember the last few kilometres, stop. Pull over somewhere safe and sleep. If this is happening regularly, it is not a matter of willpower and it is worth an appointment.
Digestion is at its worst overnight. Large meals at 2am tend to sit badly and make the rest of the shift harder. Most people do better with a proper meal before the shift and something smaller during it. Keeping the timing roughly consistent from night to night helps more than the specific contents.
Regular exercise improves sleep quality — but finishing something vigorous immediately before you try to sleep will work against you.
Adjusting badly to a roster for a week or two is ordinary. These are the things that are worth a conversation rather than another year of pushing through:
Bring a rough sleep diary if you can — a fortnight of when you slept and how it went makes the appointment far more productive than trying to reconstruct it on the spot. If you are due for a workplace assessment anyway, it is worth raising there too; see what happens in a pre-employment medical.
Sleeping badly for one bad week is normal. Sleeping badly for a year is a medical problem.
Shift work sleep disorder is a recognised condition, and there are things that help.General information only. This article is general health information for anyone who finds it useful. It is not advice about your own situation and it does not replace a consultation with a doctor who knows you. If you are worried about a symptom, book an appointment or call us on (02) 6530 7404. Last reviewed 21 July 2026.
If you are falling asleep driving home, or sleep has not improved on your days off for months, that is worth an appointment rather than another year of pushing through. Book a standard consultation and say what it is about.
Bulk billed with a valid Medicare card · Mon–Fri 8:00am–5:00pm · Muswellbrook Fair, Rutherford Road.
Prefer to meet us first? Meet the doctors →