Tas Chair: ‘We can achieve great things for general practice’

A self-described ‘accidental’ GP, Dr Toby Gardner has never looked back on his career choice to provide care to regional and rural communities.
 
Growing up in Queensland, he obtained a rural-bonded scholarship and spent four years working on the central coastal after graduating from the University of Queensland, working largely in emergency and critical care.
 
He and his family then packed up and headed south ‘as early climate refugees’ in 2006 to try out living in Tasmania, and 18 years later are still there.
 
Originally applying to move to continue working in hospitals in either acute care or cardiology, despite the pay cut moving from senior medical officer rates to an unaccredited hospital registrar position, Dr Gardner ended up applying for a late entrance into general practice training.
 
‘And the rest is history,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘I was [eventually] offered a partnership in our practice as a registrar which cemented my place in Launceston.
 
‘Having grown up in cities my whole life, I’m definitely an advocate for rural and regional placements during training to which I would have never been exposed otherwise and would probably still live in a capital city.
 
‘I love the breadth of generalism and can’t imagine ever being a partialist. There’s nothing that we as GPs never see, and in regional areas with lack of non-GP specialist support, our scope is even broader.’
 
Dr Gardner calls himself an advocate for general practice at ‘the highest level’, so it comes as little surprise he was recently appointed to join the RACGP Board as Tasmania Chair. In terms of priorities, he pledges to continue to lobby for improvements to Medicare and practice sustainability – including exemption from payroll tax on tenant doctors in his state.
 
‘[I would also like to] work on improving the pipeline for international medical graduates to come to Australia to help service our struggling rural and regional communities, while we continue to build our workforce locally through Australian universities,’ he said.
 
‘In Tasmania, like most regional areas around the country, we experience workforce pressures more acutely that those in the cities.
 
‘We are home to some of the oldest and sickest residents, with escalating health needs projected.’
 
Dr Gardner says he is likewise committed to increasing his state’s GP workforce through both state and federally backed measures such as the John Flynn Prevocational Doctor Program, and supports alternative models for funding registrars to ensure they’re not losing entitlements and income moving from the hospital to the private sector.
 
The RACGP recently welcomed a state-based trial aimed at tackling chronic rural workforce shortages under a single-employer model offering GPs in training more certainty and stability as they work towards Fellowship.
 
‘[Tasmania] being a small place, I already work closely with representatives from ACRRM, RDAA [Rural Doctors Association of Australia] and other stakeholder groups to effectively inform government on possible solutions to some of the unique issues that face our geographically dispersed population,’ Dr Gardner said.
 
‘And we’ve had good engagement with government during my time with the RACGP.’
 
As well as being a practice owner in Launceston, Dr Gardner is also Director of the state’s first urgent care centre (UCC). Launched in early 2021, the centre is designed to help address the lack of local non-GP specialist support, given there is currently only one public emergency department in Launceston.
 
‘Looking at the New Zealand model, we could see how we could integrate a UCC into the town to provide an alternative option for those patients with non-life-threatening conditions that don’t need emergency department management,’ he explained.
 
‘Of course, we still see the occasional life-threatening condition as patients can’t self-select how sick they are, so it keeps us on our toes!
 
‘The UCC has also been a great drawcard for general practice registrars who want to continue emergency and varied procedural work during their training.’
 
Currently splitting his time seeing patients between his general practice and urgent care clinics – including maintaining a 1:4 weekend roster and on-call requirements – and now as an RACGP Board member, Dr Gardner has also chosen to continue his work at the University of Tasmania as a long-time senior lecturer in community and emergency medicine, ‘flying the flag for GPs’.
 
‘There’s definitely a lot to do … and I’m doing what I can to strengthen and galvanise the profession,’ he said.
 
‘In the end, we’re all [the Board] still working GPs who can see the problems we face every day in clinical practice.
 
‘By working together as a united and effective group we’ll be able to achieve great things for general practice in Australia.’
 
Dr Toby Gardner officially assumed the role of RACGP Tasmania Chair, replacing Dr Tim Jackson, following the RACGP’s 66th Annual General Meeting on 23 November 2023.
 
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general practice advocacy RACGP Board regional workforce Tasmania Faculty