On your marks, get set...
A doomsday event? Y2K2.0? No! Just a change of the guard in GP training!
The new era of AGPT is upon us.
In even this short time as CEO of GPSA, I've had the opportunity to speak with a large number of passionate professionals who only want to do right by the med students, prevocational and vocational doctors in-training representing the future of general practice.
These are the same people who've supported their communities through unprecedented fear, and bravely tackled the uncertainty of this once-in-a-century (fingers crossed) pandemic. Through COVID furloughs and delayed access to PPE, vaccines and support staff (losing not only large numbers of GP and allied health colleagues but more than one third of all experienced practice managers), they've continued to scaffold GPs in training with mentorship, real-world education, encouragement and guidance. By way of reward, they've been overlooked as first responders and faced with twin existential threats of payroll tax and an alternative framework for registrar employment hinging on the concept of control over the primary healthcare workforce... which the pesky private model of general practice keeps out of reach of both levels of government.
When faced with these far more significant concerns, it's little wonder so many left it to the eleventh hour to pay any attention to the transition of GP training from the RTOs to the Colleges! But making this transition a smooth process means something different to everyone involved. For me, communication is key. And communication starts with knowing your audience.
At this point I have to admit that I've been perplexed for many months now by the way people in this sector see themselves and their place in the bigger picture of Australia's healthcare. Maybe it's my commercial background that's had me shaking my head every time I speak to an owner of a training practice who talks about financial sustainability in terms of 'funders' rather than 'clients' or 'services', and considers having membership to AICD prefereable to being involved in their state/territory chamber of commerce. Too few recognise that they are businesspeople with responsibilities under the Corporations Act, seeing themselves instead as a part of the public health system. They buy into the myth perpetuated by certain politicians and the media of the 'greedy doctor' and talk in hushed tones about profit when this is in fact a core requirement under ASIC regulations. Then there's the entities 'delivering' training who tend not to recognise that their costly programs completely rely on the supervisors in the clinical learning environment of the training practice actually providing 85% of the AGPT training, making supervisors and practice teams their partners not the afterthought some recent communications have suggested.
Being central to the future of primary healthcare for this nation makes supervisors and training practice teams a much bigger deal in my mind than it seems to be in the minds of GPs themselves let alone the training providers and government. Personally, I would really like to overturn this and make the voice of GPSA members as important as that of pharmacists (role substitution anyone?) and the hospitalists represented by AMA. Our members not only represent the general practice environment of today but are pivotal to the community's continued access to high quality patient-centered care into the future.
Sorry for the rant. Welcome to GP Training 2023.1!