Regional town set to benefit from supervision program

Australia’s GP workforce maldistribution continues across regional, rural and remote areas.
 
The regional New South Wales town of Armidale is no exception. But now, a remote supervision placement from the RACGP is attempting to help boost one of the town’s general practices, West Armidale Medical Clinic, by providing two supervisors to support a new registrar starting at the clinic next month.
 
Dr Donna Quinn, the RACGP’s Senior Local Medical Educator and Head of Training New England Northwest, welcomed the new placement.
 
‘The fact that a registrar will be able to practise here with remote supervision means that the patients at the clinic can continue to access care, and that makes a huge difference for a community,’ she said.
 
‘It’s also extremely fortunate that the two supervisors who signed up to do the remote supervision used to own the practice and lived in Armidale for years, so they know the patients and community.’
 
The RACGP’s remote supervision program provides training for general practice registrars to work in locations where there is limited or no regular onsite supervision, with a key objective of the initiative to improve access to care and address chronic workforce shortages by bringing more GPs to train and work in communities most in need.
 
‘Remote supervision enables a GP to train in a community with limited or no onsite supervisor available – it’s an innovative way to get more GP registrars into communities in need and improve access for patients,’ RACGP President and former Chair of General Practice Supervision Australia Dr Nicole Higgins said.
 
According to the Rural Doctors’ Association of Australia, the situation in Armidale is another example of the struggles many regional towns have when trying to attract GPs, with the association’s CEO Peta Rutherford telling the ABC that shortages are ‘becoming the norm, not the exception’.
 
‘When we’re seeing vacancies in a community like Armidale, it is concerning because the implications for access are more far-reaching than just the immediate community,’ she said.
 
In recent months, eight of Armidale’s GPs moved away, leaving more than 6000 patients in the regional town without a doctor and prompting the West Armidale Medical Clinic to provide telehealth services to fill some gaps.
 
But the town’s remaining GPs are calling for expanded programs to help address the ‘workforce crisis’.
 
Another of those is the single-employer model, which is set to be rolled out across NSW having first been trialled there in early 2020 before it was implemented statewide in Tasmania in January.
 
Under the single-employer arrangement, welcomed by the RACGP, GPs in training have the same employer for the duration of their training and retain the usual entitlements, providing them with more stability.
 
For now, the remote supervision placement is expected to benefit the community of Armidale by supporting the incoming registrar at a practice struggling to find GPs.
 
While remote supervision usually occurs in more rural areas, the placement in regional Armidale could be the first of many as the program expands to areas of need, according to Dr Tim Linton, RACGP National Lead Medical Educator of Remote Supervision.
 
‘These placements are typically in very rural and remote areas because they more commonly face shortages of both GPs and onsite supervisors,’ he said.
 
‘While very rural and remote areas remain the RACGP’s priority for these placements, when West Armidale Clinic approached us, we saw the opportunity to make a difference.
 
‘Many patients depend on this practice, and this placement is helping to keep the doors open for them.’
 
Dr Linton also believes that remote supervision could lead to more GPs staying on to live in the community they trained in, pointing to the examples of registrars involved in the program’s pilots in Norfolk Island, and Walgett, NSW, who stayed on after their training.
 
‘Every community is different, and we need to consider all the factors that go into someone’s decision to stay,’ he said.
 
‘We put a lot of work into matching a registrar to a particular community and helping the community with what’s needed to not only attract a registrar but to retain them … that’s the ideal outcome.’
 
More information about the remote supervision program is available on the RACGP website, and practices, supervisors and registrars interested can submit an expression of interest.
 
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GPs in training remote supervision rural general practice workforce shortages