Record Attendance and Rich Learning at GPME 2026
The annual GPME Conference for 2026 was held in Melbourne from 4–6 June. The conference was the largest in its history, attracting more than 200 participants - predominantly medical educators working in vocational training, but also representing a range of other educational settings. As in previous years, it provided an excellent opportunity to share ideas, innovations and a passion for this wonderful discipline.
The keynote speaker was Paul Grinzi, a very experienced medical educator from Victoria who now leads the RACGP’s supervisor professional development program in the state. He delivered a memorable and thought-provoking session based on the premise that ‘general practice is improvisation - there is no script’. Drawing on his experience in improv theatre, he involved the audience in a series of activities, including imagining we were at a cocktail party but only being able to speak gibberish! His session focused on teaching in the moment and fostering genuine reflective practice, perhaps the holy grail of general practice education. It was a wonderful scene-setter for two outstanding days of learning.
GPME was well represented in the program, delivering three workshops across a breadth of topics. I presented the first, Are you Game? Using Serious Games in General Practice Education, with Helen Mullner, the supervisor professional development lead in South Australia. The workshop explored the use of serious games in education and attracted a large and enthusiastic audience. I also co-presented The Art of General Practice: What’s on Our Walls and Why It Matters with Ed Poliness, based on findings from the 2025 Annual Survey, as well as a Saturday morning session on making the implicit functions of general practice - such as continuity of care and managing complexity -more explicit in teaching.
There were many excellent sessions, including workshops on teaching professional boundaries in clinical practice, navigating difficult conversations, and a session on the so-called confidence toolkit.
It was also wonderfully heartening to hear how widely used and highly regarded the resources and other outputs from GPSA are within the medical education community.
The photo is of Dr Valerie Quah, Medical Educator who won a GPSA’s “Consultation! The Game” as the winner of the MED-XX challenge.
Dr Simon Morgan
GPSA Education Manager