October 2022... The month my Groodle filed for divorce
This month I earned a heap of frequent flyer points, traumatised my dog just with the sight of my wheelie bag, and more than doubled the total amount of time I have spent in Canberra throughout my life!
First up the RACGP Health Summit, where I may have cringed so many times it looked like I'd developed a tic, then a week or so later RMA22. The Health Summit cringing was about the excessive use of the word "crisis", the decimation of all the opportunities to workshop blue-sky solutions by participants stuck on the granularity of MBS item numbers, and the feel of an Amway Convention created by all the dramatic music accompanying Karen Price's introduction. Other than these things it was a great networking event, where I had the chance to meet a number of people I'd only seen on Webex in the fortnightly COVID Primary Healthcare Response meetings with Michael Kidd! The three key topics were:
- Funding and fragmentation What funding model is required to support general practice’s leading role in providing patient-centred, continuous and coordinated care, and to ensure equitable access to this care?
- General practice workforce How can we address and reverse the erosion of the general practice workforce, ensuring general practice is an attractive career path with long-term career sustainability?
- General practice data How can we improve the capture, linkage and meaningful use of data (including patient experience, clinician experience and quality patient outcomes) to support equitable general practice-based care?
Not surprisingly, a lot of robust discussion was generated around topic 1, some interesting concepts raised for topic 2, but by the time topic 3 was flagged the stuffiness of the room and comparative lack of interest in data made this discussion feel like a bizarre form of torture. On reflection, I'm actually quite upset we didn't get the opportunity to revisit all 3 topics the following day, but maybe this time in reverse. The forum was over just as the concepts had started taking shape for us. Shame.
OK, in truth I could not have spared another day at that forum with all the rest of this month has held in store for us! Anyone who's administered an AGM in this era of hybrid meetings would appreciate the challenge of this alone, let alone organising a hybrid AGM in another city straight after scrambling to make a success of the Supervisor Lunch event organisers seemed to have overlooked at the ACRRM / RDAA RMA22 conference (in a separate venue)! And to top it all off? Flash floods prevented a large number of Victorian members from joining the meeting via Zoom and voting as planned. But we got through it, and welcome to the new directors for what we now refer to as our 2023 Board - Dr Candice Baker (Vic), Dr Srishti Dutta (Qld), and Dr Kate Manderson (NSW) - and returning directors Dr Justin Coleman (NT) and Dr Madhu Tamilarasan (NSW).
By the way, RMA22 was AWESOME!
Work on the NTCER review continues (thanks to all who've participated in our working groups), and we have started using this opportunity to explore solutions for GP training as part of our discussions with members. Since this overlaps with a study being undertaken by RACGP, we agreed to share information under their Ethics application in order to minimise duplication / prevent survey fatigue. We look forward to receiving the outcomes from their study in time to include it in the NTCER revision.
Other highlights for October have included a second bi-College webinar on the Transition to College-led training, and the second meeting of the SLO Network (SLON) for 2022. Funny to think that the last SLON meeting, a face-to-face / hybrid meeting held in Coogee NSW on 27th May, was when I was first asked to take on the interim role as CEO. A couple of weeks later the "interim" title was dropped and here I am (eek!), suffering a terrible case of imposter syndrome - but loving every minute of it!
As a real perk of the job, this month I was invited to attend the final GP Synergy North Coast Seasonal Celebration and Awards Night in Coffs Harbour, where I was able to catch up with the likes of Vanessa Moran, Sarah Gani, Sue Hefren and Ian Kammerman, and (even more importantly) GPSA Coffs local Jane McMahon and her grogeous daughters! Oh, and along the way I had a birthday! Kind of happy October is just about in the rear-view mirror!