Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

1 Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Introduction The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, commonly abbreviated as RACGP is a learning institution whose core duties and responsibilities targets general practitioners. The institution achieves these objectives through undertaking research, assessing skills held by doctors, as well as developing guidelines and assisting general practitioners in addressing numerous issues that crop up during their performance of duty. RACGP has also been at the fore front in developing innovations along its areas of interest as it seeks to improve on the general quality of service that it provides to its clients and the general community at large. This paper seeks to explore the institution in detail, assessing its mission and vision, its general activities, as well as analyse its strength and weaknesses.

RACGP and its industry RACGP is located in Australia and is an organization that represents all general practice professionals throughout the country, both in the urban and rural set ups. The college serves in the education industry but its main mission is to help the Australian population by ensuring they have improved health and general wellbeing. Medical students are educated and trained after RACGP carries out extensive research and helps in providing guidelines to be used in healthcare.

General practice refers to careers in the healthcare industry which offers person centred care, as well as comprehensive and coordinated healthcare to families and communities.

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Like any other professional industry, general practitioners need new skills and general expertise in order that they may come up with changes in life brought about by numerous aspects. Thus, RACGP engages in constant research, innovations and development of new techniques so as to adequately equip the general practitioners and enable them improve on their service delivery. College membership is open to any general practitioner who, once they join, can voice their concerns and give suggestions about what they think should be done in order to enable them have a working environment that is conducive. The college collects all the feedback information that is submitted from its members and uses it to design new technologies and resources that will enable the practitioners have good time in their service. In particular, RACGP focuses its attention and practise to prevocational doctors and medical students and specifically undertake vocational training, as well as advanced rural training.

Mainly, RACGP achieves its mission through use of publications that enumerates the professionally acceptable standards and career guidelines through clinical journals, news magazines, among many others. These resources are not only restricted to the members but can also be accessed by non members as well (RACGP n.d., para 1).

Corporate governance at RACGP The highest ranked organ at the RACPG is referred to as the Council. Its constitution includes a president, vice president, the president-elect, the censor-in-chief, the chairman of the council, chairman of finance, audit, as well as risk management committee, chairmen from all the national faculties representing Aboriginal together with Torres Strait Islands. Other representatives who also sit in the Council include registrar representative, and co-opted members as prescribed in the constitution (Faunce, Bolsin & Chan 2004, p. 40).

This organ is charged with the responsibility of managing all the affairs of the college. It deliberates on a number of issues afflicting the college where any council member may raise it up for deliberation in the meetings to follow. Once the Council has finished deliberating on an issue, they may delegate the powers or part of its functions to the Executive, or a specially established committee, or the senior most executive officer, for execution.

The Executive Committee may supervise daily business of the college as the powers may be conferred upon them by the Council, or exercise other powers which are supposed to be exercised by the Council, and which powers have been delegated to the Executive by the Council itself. Members of this organ include the president, Council chair, vice president, president elect, and the Censor-in-Chief.

The Council may also establish committees together with advisory boards as it may deem fit and these bodies operate within the regulations set by the Council. They are answerable directly to the Council and it is the Council body which also determines who shall sit in such boards or committees.

The Chief Executive Officer is selected by the Council mainly for purposes of overseeing projects and decisions made by the Council, or the Executive Committee. The Council reserves the right to hire and remove an executive officer from office (Barley et al. 2000, p. 505).

RACGPs Corporate social responsibility The RACGP has continuously participated in social welfare activities that aim at directly assisting the society at large to lead a quality life. One such program is the Aged Care Access Initiative whose main responsibility is to enable the residents of the aged care facilities across Australia accessibility to primary and allied health services. The whole brings together two

3 components, the general practice on the one hand, and the allied health component on the other.

The GP component, in particular, includes an incentive payment program that encourages the general practitioners to offer more support and service to the aged members of the society.

The Rural and Remote Medical Education Online is yet another of RACGP’s numerous corporate social responsibilities that aim at improving on general service delivery and quality.

The robust online platform focuses more on supporting educational needs of the rural health practitioners, enabling trainers to facilitate their programs efficiently and effectively. Users have an opportunity to enjoy an interactive online learning session with both experts in the field, as well as their peers. RACGP saw the need to develop an educational inventory that is integrated within a communication system so as to facilitate vertical integration of medical education in the rural areas. Often, the rural areas appear neglected as they lack much of the facility that can be found in urban areas. Thus, RACGP’s initiative was mainly to bind together pre-vocational and vocational training needs and enable students in these comparatively remote areas to have equal access to quality medical education as their counterparts in the urban areas (Australian Medical Association & British Medical Association 1992, p. 735).

The GP Support Program on the other hand targets the general health and working environment of general practitioners. This program is offered free of charge to all registered members as a way of expressing the college’s full commitment to self care culture among general practitioners. Through the program, registered members gain access to professional advice, helping them to cope with general stressors in life, such as personal issues, or issues that relate to their professional work. If left unattended, these stressors can potentially inhibit work performance, the general wellbeing of the practitioners, and their safety as well. Collectively, these inhibitors lower down workplace morale, affecting the general psychological health of an individual. Thus, RACGP, through its GP support program, offers short-term counselling services to the GPs. Some of these services, such as trauma and crisis counselling are available to the practitioners throughout, for 24 hours a day (Australian Medical Association & British Medical Association, 1992, p. 737).

RACPG’s mission statement and strategy analysis RACPG is committed to ensuring that the Australian population is served by a team of general practitioners who are themselves healthy, with the ultimate objective of ensuring a healthy Australia in the long run. In ensuring that these is achieved, the college has enacted a host of strategies that together, will ensure all Australians remain healthy and are served by a healthy practitioner.

The college targets a quality general practice that is fully equipped with all the necessary resources, and which shall remain vibrant throughout. RACPG has put in place all supportive mechanism, ensuring that they support all related programs in enhancing the Australian healthcare system. The college distributes general practitioners and facilities across the country so that all Australians can have equitable access to service and facility. In rural Australia where the populations have somehow been neglected, RACPG has invented state of the art training and integration of the internet to provide training and support to the students. Other communities, like the native Aborigins and Torres islanders have all been factored in plans by RACPG which aims at ensuring healthy needs of all are all catered for.

The college also employs forward thinking research staff whose main purpose is to explore on numerous ways and avenues through which RACPG can improve service delivery to the communities. These researchers receive adequate funding from the college which is intended to support advances in the e-health front, in the education and training sector, as well as in the

4 clinical service sector of the college. The collegiate environment is particularly significant in providing to all members an exceptional value that goes a long way in sustaining their service delivery.

As a guiding principle, RACPG endeavours to entrench in their members the aspect of quality and excellence in their service delivery. The college has emphasized more on the need for its members to uphold integrity, ensure they adhere to ethics, transparency and honesty while also supporting fairness and equity. The common standards, quality, and curriculum assessment are particularly helpful in imparting standard knowledge that also allows for continuous professional development. The stakeholder services that are provided to all members, partnerships and networks, as well as the strong corporate governance have collectively been designed to create a unique culture that upholds strong career values. Additional funds required to support these services are raised through the sale of publications, events organization, branding, promotion, sponsorships, and commercial relationships (National Library Australia 1992, p. 32).

RACPG’s code of conducts RACPG adheres to numerous codes of conduct that directly apply to the different areas of application for the general practitioners. For instance, criterion 1.4.2 is a code of ethics on clinical autonomy which grants the practitioners power to evaluate and make appropriate decisions affecting clinical care. Thus, all GPs have the power to determine whatever clinical care that they consider appropriate to offer to patients. They can also determine other specialists and professionals to whom they can refer patients for further diagnosis. They can also determine the pathology, or diagnostic imaging, and any other investigations they wish to order, as well as decide on a provider of their own choice (Hearder 2004, p. 75).

Criterion 1.2.1 specifically refers to practice information, where it allows patients the chance and opportunity to offer patients with adequate information about the services rendered.

Patients are to be provided with written information concerning the practise so that patients may be able to understand the range of services provided and also be able to determine how the cost was arrived at. Equally, the communication principle informs patients on how to follow up results, how to get in touch with a copy detailing the health information of the patient, as well as how to give feedback information in cases where the patient feels he has a complaint that needs to be forwarded to RACGP for action. Practitioners serving defined ethnic communities are expected to write appropriate information using the most common language that the community at large understands. Specific formats and appearance of the information sheet have also been elaborated, where sheets that are electronically generated are acceptable in general. GPs are supposed to ensure that the sheets bear information which will be helpful to patients. Where need be, GPs have to ensure they use pictures and other diagrams in order to ensure that the information is fully understood by the audience as anticipated (Small 1993, p. 293).

RACGP Swot Analysis Strength

Weakness

Quality service provision which aims at ensuring that all patients are fully taken care of.

Customers and practitioners in far flanged areas, especially in the rural areas, have not been fully covered with RACGP as is the case with urban dwellers.

Good welfare service to GPs in a bid to ensure

5 their attention and focus to patients is not drawn away by stressors which generally affects motivation.

A strong brand that is associated with good reputation across Australia.

Opportunities

Customers who may be unable t read for one reason or the other have not been given special attention. Instead, all forms and sheets are standard and only favour those able to read and write.

Threats

The innovations and research activities at the firm gives RACPG a head start against other rival firms.

The highly dynamic nature of technology is likely to render innovations by RACGP obsolete faster than can be anticipated.

The quality with which RACGP provides services to its clients is likely to attract more customers as every customer often wishes to be treated with utmost care (Bruce, 2005, p. 45).

Competitors in the health industry are also exploring new avenues through which they can dislodge RACGP from the pole position through their much improved service delivery (Middleton & Field, 2001, p. 453).

Commentary The manner in which RACGP manages the future in the present is particularly strategic and well calculated to produce results. The contemporary world is dominated by technology and it is difficult for any enterprise or organization to anticipate growth while at the same time not giving due consideration to technology. Thus, the initiative to explore technological avenues and capabilities of RACGP through constant innovations is the best planning that can be thought of.

With such organization and planning, it is easier for the college to study market trends and realign its activities effectively well in advance. This will always put competitors on the wrong footing as they will always tend to wait until when compelled by changed situation. In this regard, RACGP will always attract and maintain customers while the other players in the industry will be left struggling. Financially, RACGP will always be at a healthy position to sustain changes and programs as the many customers will be a solid source of revenue. It will also give the practitioners a lot of innovation in their service delivery as technology often speeds work performance and also enhances efficiency.

Conclusion The RACGP is an institution whose main objective is to see to it that every Australian national gains access to quality healthcare service. The college opens up its membership to health workers and practitioners, including doctors and student doctors, and streamlines their service delivery through career guidelines and the drawing of curriculum to be used in their training. The Council is the highest ranked organ in the organization which oversees its overall operations, and is aided by the Executive Committee, as well other special committees which are formed by the Council. The college participates in corporate social responsibility through numerous programs, some of which include service to the aged in society. There are code of conducts which guides the activity of GPs in their general dealings with the community and other members of the society.

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7 List of References Australian Medical Association & British Medical Association, 1992, The Medical Journal of Australia, Pennsylvania State University: Australasian Medical Publishing Company.

Barley, E et al., 2000, ‘Reducing error, improving safety’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 321, no.

7259, pp. 505-509.

Bruce, I 2005, Charity marketing: Meeting need through customer focus, ICSA Publishing: London, UK. Faunce, T, Bolsin, S & Chan, W 2004, ‘Supporting whistleblowers in academic medicine: Training and respecting the courage of professional conscience’, Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 40-43.

Hearder, R 2004, ‘More complex than a stereotype: Australian POW Doctors and the Japanese in captivity, 1942-45’, Health and History, Vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 75-91.

Middleton, P & Field, S 2001, The GP trainer's handbook, Radcliffe Publishing: Abingdon, OX. National Library Australia, 1992, Australian national bibliography, National Library Australia: Canbera, Australia.

RACGP, n.d., ‘The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners,’ [online] Available at: http://www.racgp.org.au/ [Accessed May 8, 2012] Small, WM 1993, ‘Ethics in business and administration: An international and historical perspective’, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 293-300.

Tully, S 2007, Research handbook on corporate legal responsibility, Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham, UK.