Doctors in Training
Young Doctors Flying the GP Flag The GPRA is giving general practice a dose of youthful enthusiasm with its program of appointing GP ambassadors in our major teaching hospitals. The GP Ambassador program now has four junior doctors working in Perth hospitals spreading the good word for General Practice among their peers. Dr Kate Reid-Milligan (Fremantle Hospital), Dr Jemma Smith (RPH), Dr Clark Maul (SCGH) and Dr Tamla Wilke (JHC) are part of the General Practice Registrars Australia (GPRA) Going Places network, which has now placed 44 GP Ambassadors in 42 teaching hospitals across Australia. Membership of the network, which was started 18 months ago, is 1800, with 164 members in WA. Dr Kate Reid-Milligan says the ambassador role is being a voice for general practice in the hospital system. “The role is quite a new one so many young doctors begin by asking what it is we do,” she said. “Most of them I talk to seem very open to the possibility of pursuing general practice as a career. And then, of course, there are a few who have decided on other pathways and are only interested in the pen and the mints!
“But I think it is important that someone in the hospital is around to remind people of career options outside of hospital medicine.” Kate says she is drawn to general practice for the variety of presentations and to develop relationships with patients and their families – to become the ‘family doctor’ – and to work with the young and old, men and women and “never being able to guess what might come in the door next”. And not forgetting the lifestyle and work-life balance, which she says is also appealing. “We all do GP rotations in medical school but once we start work, all we think about is hospital medicine. We find out so much about hospital specialties through working in those fields and hearing about the training programs and careers from our registrars and consultants, but we don’t get exposed to general practice in the same way,” she said. “It’s important for someone in the hospital to promote GP as a career and distribute information about training.”
n Dr Jemma Smith
n Dr Tamla Wilke
Kate believes that the ambassador progam will also lift the profile of general practice so that it becomes a desirable and soughtafter specialty. “It may even change the public’s perception of doctors either being a specialist or ‘just a GP’,” she said. Dr Clark Maul, who is a resident at SCGH, came to medicine after a career in corporate law. He says the GP Ambassador peer-topeer marketing initiative was effective.
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