Out and about - August
Exploring opportunities to expand the GPSA community
After receiving broad encouragement from international delegates at the WONCA World conference in Sydney last October, GPSA and GPRA chose to collaborate on the promotion of our unique support services at the WONCA Asia Pacific Region conference in Singapore. The joint presentation made on Thursday 22nd August can be found here.
At this well-attended conference held in the Raffles City Convention Centre, GPSA CEO Carla Taylor and GPRA CEO Jo-Anne Chapman co-hosted the booth that quickly attracted the moniker of "the Aussie corner". Family doctors from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Turkey, Great Britain, the Phillipines, Qatar and New Zealand converged on this space to mix with some prominent Australian academics, educators and GPs around GPSA's fun new way to engage learners: Consultation! The Board Game. Doctors Ern Chang, Ian Kamerman, Catherine Harman, Josephine Tchia, Constance (Dimity) Pond, Jenny Neil, Jagdeesh (Jag) Singh Dhaliwal, Johanna Lynch, Amanda Barnard and April Armstrong were amongst those who stopped by to fly the flag alongside WONCA World President, Australian Dr Karen Flegg, and RACGP President-Elect, Dr Michael Wright.
The key takeaways from this conference:
- Other than Australia and New Zealand, family doctors / GPs across the Asia-Pacific region are not yet recognised as specialists
- GPSA's focus on supporting in-practice teaching and supervision is seen as a unique and necessary component in the development of a robust family physician workforce in neighbouring countries
- GPSA's virtual community of practice (GSPA Community) has the potential to be a world-first global platform for supervisors and other educators to network and develop international policy
- Consultation! The Board Game and the Scenario and Scenario Ed apps are regarded as educational tools that transcend geography, language and training frameworks
- in Singapore, "general practice" is the label assigned to private community practices, while "famliy physicians" are typically employees in the public Polyclinics system
- the professional and community denigration experienced by GPs in Australia is common across the Asia Pacific region
- Singapore Slings are part-fruit, part-dynamite
This last takeaway was a discovery made on Friday 23rd August - when GPRA, GPSA and Business For Doctors (BFD) co-hosted an impromptu networking event for fellow Australians including Monash University academic GPs Jenny Neil and Jag Dhaliwal, GP and researcher Dimity Pond, and Chair of DoHAC's GP Training Advisory Committee and Associate Dean of the ANU Rural Clinical School, Professor Amanda Barnard. Fabulous conversations, colourful cocktails, and great ideas abounded. Watch this space for details about upcoming networking events in Darwin, Perth and Adelaide!
