GPSA commends stakeholder initiatives in pre-budget submissions
General Practice Supervision Australia (GPSA) commends the calls for increased funding to empower training practices to attract, train and retain high quality GPs/RGs in the 2024 pre-budget submissions to Treasury.
In particular, GPSA acknowledges the submissions put forward by their sister peak, General Practice Registrars Australia (GPRA), the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), and the Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA).
“This year it feels as if a fog has lifted and the GP training sector has a positive outlook to work towards,” GPSA Chair, Dr Srishti Dutta, says of the 2024 pre-budget submissions.
“What is most encouraging is how GPRA, ACRRM and RDAA have embedded GP supervisors and training practices in their long-term attraction and retention strategies.”
A nod to GPSA’s own focus on enabling GP/RG supervisors to enrich their connections with, and role model a less encumbered career for, medical students and doctors in-training is evident in several of the initiatives proposed in the pre-budget submissions.
GPSA is fully supportive of the establishment of an independent funding mechanism to facilitate paid parental leave for all GPs in training, and relishes the opportunity for GPSA members to engage in GPRA’s Future GP Peer initiative.
ACRRM’s recognition of the RG/GP supervisor’s clinical consultant advisory role - and call for appropriate funding mechanisms to honour this - is also applauded by GPSA, as are the principles of simplified supervisor payments and additional investment in supervisors proposed in the RDAA’s General Practice Supervision Support priority.
“Each of these organisations has in its own way recognised the integral part GPSA members play in growing and strengthening the primary care workforce, seeking solutions that respect in-practice training as the wrap-around service the student and trainee needs in the unique context of general practice,” says Dr Dutta.
“Quality practice placements in every corner of Australia, urban and rural, are crucial for a robust primary care sector. These placements involve time and commitment from a vast body of GPs and practice staff, whose scaffolding of medical students through to vocational trainees is only sustainable with meaningful financial and structural support.”
GPSA also praises the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) for a submission that highlights the need for Commonwealth support to increase access to affordable healthcare in our communities.
The 2024 GPSA pre-budget submission can be viewed online here.