RACGP President Dr Michael Wright was impressed by the collaboration happening between GP clinics in Kalgoorlie-Boulder to support patients in the area.
The head of the College spoke to Medical Forum while in the Goldfields city on a visit coordinated by the RACGP WA faculty.
“I’ve been really impressed to see how all these different services are trying to work together to make the most of the limited health workforce out here,” Dr Wright said.
“We’ve got an under supply of GPs around the country. It’s really important that we get more GPs and support for practices, particularly in rural areas like Kalgoorlie.”
While in the outback city, Dr Wright met with local GPs, medical students from the Rural Clinical School, junior doctors working at the hospital, representatives from Aboriginal health services, universities, primary health providers and stakeholders including WA Country Health Service.
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“One of the practices I’ve seen was doing an amazing job, it’s got a medical student, it’s got registrars, there’s a couple of training programs that people can participate in,” he said.
“There’s also practices that have got multiple registrars and are really trying to work together to support everyone to understand the complexity of general practice, but also helping them to pass their exams.
“And it is not just the GPs but also working with our nurses and allied health providers, they are making sure everyone is working together.”
Dr Wright spoke with students within the Rural Clinical School who, while from different universities, were working together.
“We know that if you , as a medical student, get exposed to and have positive experiences in the country and in general practice, you’re much more likely to go into regional general practice and to stay there,” he said.
Dr Wright said one of the messages that had come through from talking to stakeholders in Kalgoorlie-Boulder was the great potential there was in encouraging more regional students to train in medicine.
“That’s one of the messages I’ve heard, is that it’s really important that we train and retain our own, so we try to encourage people from regional and rural areas to do medicine as well as give medical students the chance to do their training outside of the cities.”
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He said while progress had been made, more support was needed to sustain the momentum of addressing longstanding challenges in attracting and retaining GPs and registrars and improving training accreditation for practices, which were topics discussed as part of a roundtable discussion.
“General practice is important everywhere, but particularly outside of big city life, it provides the main lifeline of the health system,” he said.
RACGP Vice President and WA Chair Dr Ramya Raman, who also joined on the visit, added: “It’s great to engage with GP registrars and listen to future practitioners about their aspirations, their needs and wants and how we get them to be best versions of themselves in a professional setting – for their own benefit and that of their patients.”
RACGP members also visited Karratha while in WA, where they attended GP training sites, Mawarnkarra Health Service, an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and Karratha Hospital.
RACGP Rural Chair Associate Professor Michael Clements highlighted that access to accommodation, childcare and travel were significant barriers for attracting GPs to the remote mining town.
“Remote supervision can help to ensure Karratha has the GPs it needs, but these future GPs also need to be able to access housing and the services young workers and families need like childcare,” he said
“Karratha has a lot of young families coming in, so it needs more GPs to ensure those families can truly settle here. Access to a GP can be as much of a bottleneck to a community’s ability to grow as access to other services and housing.
“GPs in Karratha have told me it’s access to childcare and housing that’s been the biggest barrier to attracting future GPs to train here and hopefully join the community long term.”
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