What happens after you win an RACGP award?

You get nominated for the award – but you don’t get told who it was [that nominated you]. As someone with pretty significant impostor syndrome, it was so nice just to be nominated, that your peers perceive you as being good at your job. It’s been lovely to be on committees, but being nominated was the nicest thing.
 
That is GP and lecturer Dr Adelaide Boylan, who was named the RACGP’s Registrar of the Year in 2017.
 
‘We sit seeing patient after patient all day, and not necessarily talking to other doctors, worrying about what we might have missed with a patient. So it is a really lovely feeling to think others think you are doing a good job,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘You go to work every day trying to be a good doctor, but you can have a bit of a battered mentality. To feel validated by people you enjoy working with feels really lovely,’ she said.
 
The 2017 award has also brought Dr Boylan a number of new opportunities.
 
She now sits on the RACGP Expert Committee – Pre-Fellowship Education and was selected for this year’s Future Leaders Program.
 
‘It’s been a great opportunity to be involved in the development and evolution of our profession that wouldn’t have come to me otherwise,’ Dr Boylan said.
 
‘The award has given me more credibility as a new Fellow. I moved quite quickly through the GP pathway, as I always knew I wanted to be a GP, so I didn’t spend years developing networks in hospitals. It’s helped open doors.’
 
Dr Boylan said the Future Leaders Program is a great way to meet like-minded GPs who love general practice but missed the collaborative model of hospital-based work.
 
She credits the award in helping with her latest move into teaching at the University of Adelaide, working with the healthcare simulation teams and designing education for undergraduate medical students.
 
Dr Boylan also runs a collaboration with the law school to simulate medico-legal scenarios, where medical students brief law students before working together to produce the best advice for a scenario.
 
Describing herself as ‘always on the move’, Dr Boylan originally graduated from law school in Adelaide and worked as a lawyer before turning to medicine. Looking forward, she hopes to work in both academia and general practice.
 
Dr Boylan called on GPs to consider nominating a colleague for this year’s RACGP Awards ‘to make them feel good about themselves’.
 
Nominations for the RACGP Awards are open until Friday 17 May. Awards include Registrar of the Year, General Practitioner of the Year, General Practice Supervisor of the Year and General Practice of the Year, as well as the honorary awards.

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