‘Making connections’ to support GPs and their communities

RACGP Rural Chair Associate Professor Michael Clements has clocked up 10 years as either an RACGP Faculty Council member or Chair.
 
The length of his tenure, he believes, is a testament to what he has been able to deliver, and benefit from, during that time in both the Queensland and Rural faculties, by ‘making connections’ between different groups to effect meaningful change.
 
‘Some of my greatest career satisfaction in the council work and the college is about making connections between different groups and different industries, and government and non-government, and actually being able to bring those voices together and make those connections work,’ he tells newsGP.
 
As he prepares to end his term as Rural Faculty Chair, and turn his attention to the RACGP Expert Committee – GP Workforce as its inaugural Chair, Associate Professor Clements is keen to encourage other GPs around Australia to consider nominating for the upcoming RACGP Faculty Council elections.
 
Multiple positions are open across the college’s 11 Faculty Councils, which include seven state and territory-based faculties, as well as councils representing Specific Interests, GPs in Training, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and Rural.
 
From this year, all positions are moving from two-year to three-year terms, except for the Western Australian Faculty, where only the first five of 10 candidates with the highest votes will receive three-year terms, with the following five appointed for two-year terms.
 
Based in Townsville, Associate Professor Clements first joined the Queensland Council Faculty after deciding he needed to ‘understand the system more’, having spent several years in medical management.
 
‘I wanted to be aware of the factors that would influence not just me, but the doctors that I worked with,’ he said.
 
‘It was partly because I wanted to learn more, and partly because I had some experience in management, I’d done my fellowship in medical administration, I was interested in advocacy, I was interested in what was going on with the politics of general practice, and so this was an entry point for me.’
 
Within a few years he became the Queensland Council’s Deputy Chair. But it was an invitation to then join the Rural Faculty Council that became a turning point for him.
 
‘I ended up realising quite quickly that the rural advocacy – the commitment to support our rural and remote communities and the doctors that serve them – was really where my heart was, and it’s where I felt I was needed,’ he said.
 
‘So that’s where I moved to, and set my feet in the ground there.’
 
What he has loved most about his time on the Rural Faculty has been the opportunity to share the opinions of others.
 
‘The thing that I value most is sharing the perspectives of those that I meet,’ he says.
 
‘Going to rural towns everywhere, from South Australia, WA, Northern Territory, and bringing those voices into Parliament House, I really value and have enjoyed doing that. And talking to politicians, saying, "Well, when I was in Katherine meeting Anjali, the practice owner there, these are the issues that she’s facing”.
 
‘And then I enjoy taking some of the information into planning meetings where they’re trying to solve a problem, and I say, “I’ve seen them solve it in this way in WA”, or “I’ve seen the Northern Territory government solve it in this way”.’
 
Associate Professor Clements says being on an RACGP Faculty Council is a commitment that can be tailored to whatever time a GP has available.
 
‘The Council and the Board and the Faculty Chair role is something that will take all of your time if you want it to; it can be a full-time job in terms of your ongoing advocacy work, or it can be something that fits in around what time you can give,’ he said.
 
Nominations for RACGP Faculty Elections close this Friday, 28 August at 4 pm (AEST). Candidates will be announced on Monday 7 September, with voting opening from midday that day.
 
Voting closes at midday on Thursday 17 September (AEST), with elected members announced the following day.
 
For more information and to nominate, visit the RACGP website.
 
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advocacy Faculty Council election GPs in training RACGP Faculty Council RACGP Specific Interests Rural Faculty Council