Finding news ways to support the future

In the first half of 2023, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care shared the findings of their research into the reasons for medical student attrition from general practice training. This project found that, unsurprisingly for those at the coalface, not all medical students are the right “fit” for general practice and struggle with the uncertainty of being faced with a never-ending stream of undifferentiated presentations. Another key finding was  that many students feel like they are left in a corner without any real supervision or guidance and effectively “pot-planted”.

Since first hearing this phrase just a couple of months ago, I have to say it is astounding how quickly it has taken purchase as the go-to description for medical student placements. As that annoying person who just has to find out why there is an issue/ how it has evolved/ what’s needed for a solution to be implemented, I quickly reached out to memebrs of the GPSA Board, several SLOs, my counterpart at GPRA and colleagues at Monash University to get a better understanding of an area of GP supervision that obviously falls under the remit of many GPSA members but for some reason has never been a point of focus in either our education or advocacy activities.

Having been contacted earlier this year by a longstanding GPSA member and ME for Deakin University, Dr Eldon Lyon, to help him address the absence of resources for supervisors of medical students, this month we put the final touches on our co-developed toolbox - a resource built with existing GPSA supervisor guides and tools reframed to suit the learner level. We look forward to launching this at the ANZ Prevocational Medical Educators Forum at the end of the year. 

I look forward to sharing this with you and getting your input into how we can improve on this to better support the supervisors of this country’s future GP trainees… who will in turn hopefully be our future GP supervisors!