GPSA’s advocacy efforts include a vast composite of the things you see and a whole lot of conversations with sector stakeholders behind the scenes. All of this starts with the pain-points and suggestions you communicate with us through direct emails, discussions at conferences, on the GPSA Community platform, and via participation in research including the annual supervision survey “ENGAGE” (which you will be asked to contribute to throughout March).
The most commonly-asked questions I get are:
- Why are no new practices being accredited for training in MMM1 areas?
- I am a part time GP, and enthusiastic about supervising, how can I get involved in supervision of registrars?
- What can we do to ensure we can contribute to medical student supervision, when we have limited room in our urban practice?
I may not always have the perfect answers for each person, but the impact of and actions that come from your questions don’t end there. Listening to you, hearing from you, allows us to view things from different perspectives – ensuring the diversity of our members, and your needs and proposed solutions, are understood and recognised in our advocacy as well as our team’s focus for education, research and member support.
The last 15 months in GP training has proven the Heraclitus saying about nothing being permanent except change. Across the AGPT landscape, in this brief period (following closely on the heels of the transition from RTO-led training and all the changes that entailed) there has been the expansion of Single Employment Model pilots, the negotiation of a new NTCER, substantial progress toward recognition of Rural Generalist Medicine (RGM) as a specialist field within general practice, increased opportunities for GPs with special skills, and a steady but significant increase in GP training numbers. Shifting to the pipeline for GP training, we have seen an increase in the time medical students now spend within community general practice, and preparation for more prevocational training to occur in community general practice as well.
GPSA has been involved in all of these changes at a variety of levels. This has only been possible because of our very targeted advocacy effort to establish one previously-overlooked fact for relevant stakeholders and policymakers: none of this reform across our sector is possible without the continued engagement of resolute, committed, and experienced GP supervisors, training teams and training sites. Only with our members’ dedication to the delivery of a quality placement experience can the desired workforce outcomes – continued attraction and retention of the GPs needed for the future of the profession and the health of our communities – be achieved.
This is the backdrop against which I have viewed the additional funding promises by both major parties leading into the federal election, including the additional support for registrars, prevocational doctors, and indexation of supervision payments as an endorsement of our members’ ongoing commitment and generosity. It should be noted that this last supervisor-specific point has not made its way into print but was communicated to us directly in a phone call from the Health Minister’s Office just hours before Prime Minister Albanese’s announcement on Sunday 23rd February.
The possibility that the promised access to paid parental and study leave – a promise echoed in essence, albeit without any implementation detail at this stage, by the Coalition – might come without any administrative or fiscal burdens on training sites is in itself very promising. All we need to do now is secure an increase in medical student and prevocational supervisor and practice subsidies or incentives in line with the announced priorities around increased placements of these learners in general practice settings. This is a point of advocacy we will continue to pursue until we achieve the desired results.
Many of us already support medical students and/or prevocational doctors – but too few of us recognise this as “supervision”. Please know that regardless of the label assigned to you by the university or other entity, whether “teacher” or “mentor” or some alternative, you are a supervisor. And you deserve to be recognised and rewarded as such when your effort in providing a great experience for our learners and trainees is to not only play a major role in building the pipeline for vocational training but encouraging these GPs of tomorrow to perpetuate general practice by stepping into your shoes as our future supervisors… So you can bet we are also promoting the importance of making the GP supervisor role a career destination in its own right in our advocacy efforts!
As with any changes such as those proposed by the Labour government, the impact will be different for each of us. The Devil will be in the detail as they say. Yet we really must pause to reflect on this pre-election focus on the primary healthcare sector and see this as progress for our profession or at the very least an acknowledgement of our efforts in keeping Australians healthy, even if only notionally and indeed incrementally.
Looking ahead, more changes are inevitable. Please continue to support each other throughout these times of trials and triumphs.
The quote I leave you to ponder this month comes from the movie The Equalizer (which feels strangely fitting at present), spoken by one of Denzel Washington’s iconic characters:
“When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too.”
