Supporting the training and education of junior doctors in general practice

Aim: Improve the education and support of early career GPs and junior doctors who are interested to learn more about general practice.

GPEP1 provides an excellent framework for general practice education in the first year of the GP training programme. Improving the learning opportunities available outside of the GPEP1 year will result in early career doctors feeling well supported to embark on a career in general practice. There are two key groups to consider:

Firstly those new to GP eg: community based attachments - 3 month placements for hospital juniors in GP; or rural hospital medicine trainees who are undertaking a 6 month placement in general practice but are not on the dual training programme. Secondly, those who have completed GPEP1 and are undertaking GPEP2 and GPEP3 registrar years, in whom there is an appetite for better provision, education and support.

We propose tackling these 2 groups, each of which have different educational needs, in different ways.

1. New GP Learners program: A half day seminar program run fortnightly which is attended by those doing community based attachment runs, or Rural Hospital Medicine trainees not enrolled in the GPEP programme, in which there is time for structured learning on the basics of general practice, in line to some extent with the education offered in the GPEP1 scheme.
2. GPEP2/3 program: A half day seminar program run fortnightly which provides GPEP2/3’s paid educational time for attendance. This would be a programme structured to the learning needs and requests of this group, requiring facilitation and co-ordination in line with GPEP, but supplementary to the provisions of the college.

Marlborough Primary Health plans to run a proof of concept of the following model in 2023 and believes this concept is scalable nationally to support recruitment, training and education in general practice.

Improving the learning opportunities available outside of the GPEP1 year will result in early career doctors feeling well supported to embark on a career in general practice, increasing recruiting to GP training.