Expert urges GPs to make time for self-care amid burnout

‘You cannot provide healthcare unless you include self-care, and as doctors, we are absolutely rubbish at this.’
 
That is according to Dr Jenny Brockis, a GP, lifestyle medicine physician, and keynote speaker at the GP24 national conference in Perth in November.
 
The theme of this year’s GP24 is ‘reimagining healthcare’ and aims to shine a light on the future of general practice and how innovation, technology and new research can shape the way GPs care for their communities.
 
Dr Brockis’ keynote address, ‘Happy, healthy and fulfilled: Reimagining practitioner wellbeing’, comes at a time when many GPs are feeling more burnt out than ever before.
 
‘We go into general practice, the best job in the world, with a spark in our eye and we think, “this is going to be wonderful because I’m part of the community, I see lots of people from cradle to grave”, we build this lovely image in our minds,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘Then the cold, hard reality of general practice hits, and the biggest issue I see in general practice today is that loss of zest and enthusiasm.
 
‘We have to ask ourselves the hard questions and say, “well, what isn’t working? What is unsustainable about the way we go about doing our job”, and so in the keynote, I’ll be asking those questions.’
 
Dr Brockis will join other keynote speakers Dr Jordan Nguyen, Dr John Buckley, Professor Helen Milroy, and Dr Amandeep Hansra, who will discuss topics ranging from technology to medical education, cultural safety, and digital health.
 
Dr Brockis will use her time on stage to offer GPs a ‘very gentle reminder that we are also human’, and of the importance of making time within a busy work day to eat, move, and socialise.
 
‘You’re allowed to go to the toilet, you’re allowed to have a lunch break before four o’clock – we have to re-evaluate how we design our work day,’ she said.
 
‘It’s going to change from person to person how much autonomy they’ve got, but I think we need to look at our energy, we need to look at our mindset, and we need to look at our support strategies.
 
‘If we start with ourselves and really discover the joy and the love of what general practice can provide for us, that will ripple across to our patients, it will benefit our home relationships, benefit our colleagues, benefit everybody – it’s a win-win.’
 
With GP24 now just two months away, final preparations are rolling out to ensure the conference’s success.
 
Dozens of workshops and presentations across the weekend will include a wide range of topics, including the changing landscape of Alzheimer’s disease, activating student engagement in GP education, and digital health for precision medicine.
 
RACGP WA Chair Dr Ramya Raman told newsGP she is excited to welcome her colleagues to the west coast.
 
‘After COVID, it’s been trickier to bring people together and this is a great opportunity to come together and meet colleagues you probably haven’t seen for a long time and meet some new colleagues as well,’ she said.
 
‘It’s an opportunity to cross paths with people that probably we wouldn’t do so in our day-to-day clinical practice, whether it be with academic colleagues, or medical educators, or potentially other practicing GPs with special interests.
 
‘I often get the comment that Perth is quite far away, but it’s a beautiful part of the country and despite the distance, we’ve got a very close-knit community of medical practitioners that includes GPs, as well as relationships with other non-GP specialists.’
 
GP24 will be held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre from 21–23 November, there are also optional pre-conference workshops on offer on 20 November.
 
Early bird registration will remain open until 30 September.
 
RACGP members can earn up to 29 CPD hours if they attend the full three-day conference, with an additional 20 hours CPD available through a range of optional inclusions, such as Reviewing Performance (RP) and Measuring Outcomes (MO) activities.
 
For more information, to register, or to access the conference’s program, visit the GP24 website.
 
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