Australian Medical Association: GP Training A Must

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Also Included In: Medical Students / Training
Article Date: 16 Jun 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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As part of General Practice Week (15-21 June), the Australian Medical Association has again called on the Rudd Government to make general practice training a priority.

AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, said that, if the Government truly wanted to strengthen primary care in Australia, it needed to help engineer a significant increase in the number of doctors choosing general practice as a career.

"GPs are the interface of quality health care for Australians and the Government must assist with measures to encourage new graduates from medical schools to choose to become a GP," she said.

Although the number of GPs increased by 4.2 per cent over the four-year period from 2001 to 2005, it had little effect due to population growth. In addition, we need to encourage more graduates in to rural general practice as well.

Dr Capolingua said the supply of GPs must keep pace with Australia's population growth and increasing health needs.

"Patients know and trust their GPs to provide them with holistic care and advice. Communities value their GPs and do not want to lose them," she said.

Dr Capolingua said that GPs were looking to the recent Federal Budget for a detailed plan and investment to expand training opportunities for medical students, pre-vocational doctors and GP registrars in existing medical practices.

"Instead, GPs were let down, with the recent Federal budget even cutting back the prevocational general practice program which enables young doctors to experience general practice and also assists by providing GP workforce. The Government has committed $275 million to roll out GP Super Clinics, and the AMA calls for some of this money to go into existing practices to open more GP training opportunities."

Dr Capolingua said the Government also needed to invest in infrastructure and facilities.

"There must be proper recognition of the costs that GPs incur when training and supervising medical students and junior doctors," she said.

Medical graduate numbers will more than double by 2012, but AIHW data indicates that not enough graduates were choosing general practice to meet demand.

"We must act now to make general practice a more attractive career choice for our future doctors," Dr Capolingua said.

General Practice Week (15-21 June) highlights the importance of general practice in our healthcare system and shows that GPs are leading the way to better health.

Australian Medical Association