GPSA Chair Report – October 2023

Hi all, another month and we are preparing for the AGM.  There are 3 Elected Director positions vacant, plus the option for 2 appointed Board Director positions available.  Nominations have closed and we are running this AGM as a virtual meeting, so please make sure you can attend, or if not, please get your proxies in to the Company Secretary (Carla) according to the instructions here.

The allocation of Registrars for 2024 has now occurred in most of the country and there has been a lot of angst from Registrars and Supervisors re the process.  ACRRM allocations have been smooth but the very short timeframes and the “open market” approach from RACGP has been fraught.  On the first day the TMS could not cope with the volume of potential applicants, some practices receiving many applicants and others not enough! Positions have been limited with a lot of practices who have received a much smaller number of Registrar positions  than they felt that they were expecting.  There were other issues as well, which were discussed on our Community Platforms. All these comments are being collated and will be discussed with RACGP at our next meeting.  I get the feeling that a lot of the anger and disappointment could have been avoided with much clearer and more timely communication with RACGP members. 

On the brighter side, our new app “Scenario” has been released now and there has been an overwhelming response to it.  This app will allow the user to generate a clinical scenario in a number of different areas with a suggested prompt or two.  These scenarios are great to use in training sessions and everyone who has seen the app so far has been very quick to heap praise upon it.  Get it now from your Apple or Android app store!

We have of course been attending a number of conferences recently, showing our support for Supervisors and Supervising Practices.  We always seem to have someone at the booth talking about quality GP Supervision and looking at the educational supports that we provide as well as looking at “Scenario” and just asking for advice.  We have been presenting various papers at these conferences and this shows the quality of research that GPSA undertakes – congratulations to Sami and our research team at GPSA. 

Please let us know if you want to be involved in the research that is undertaken by us. We are currently developing an evaluation tool for the GPCLE (General Practice Clinical Learning Environment) that is described on our website here.