But there will be a wait before you can add it to your AHPRA profile.
Health ministers have officially recognised rural generalism as a specialty field within general practice, the culmination of more than 20 years of advocacy from the rural GP community.
It marks just the second addition to specialty practice in 15 years.
This is not the end of the line yet, though; the next step is for the Australian Medical Council to define the role of an RG and to endorse ACRRM and the RACGP’s programs of study.
Only once this is complete will rural generalism be a fully-fledged specialty field. Still, the official health minister recognition is a major milestone for the colleges.
“From ACRRM perspective, it’s 25 years or more in just the thinking behind it and the recognition of the need for it,” ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin told The Medical Republic.
“There’s … [still a number of] the processes that need to be in place to make sure that it gets done right and then gets rolled out across jurisdictions on the state level, but also how it gets represented in the MBS as well.
“It does finally recognise the really broad set of things that we have to do as rural generalists across the spectrum and in a whole bunch of different settings – not just the traditional ones like anaesthetics and obstetrics and emergency, but also mental health and palliative care and [advanced skills training in areas where] it’s what you do with your mind and your communication more so than what you might do with your hands.”
RACGP rural chair Professor Michael Clements said the recognition was excellent news, but warned doctors not to start calling up AHPRA just yet.
“It’s good to see recognition, which we hope will lead to a reinforcement of the professional identity, which will help with both attraction and hopefully with retention and with remuneration models,” he told TMR.
“But we can’t start using those post nominals yet.”
Rural Doctors Association of Australia president Dr RT Lewandowski also predicted that the move would increase the number of RGs in training.
“It finally is going to give recognition to the skills and to the training and the dedication that’s been put into rural generalists – which we can now call them officially – but importantly too … I think it’s going to be a big boon to improving outcomes for rural communities,” he told TMR.
“It’s hard to train to do something that doesn’t exist, so [now] trainees can see an endpoint, they can see recognition, and I foresee more people taking up training in rural generalism.”
Health Minister Mark Butler called the recognition “a significant milestone” and credited the joint work of the government, the two GP colleges and the wider sector.
“Rural generalist GPs will make a real difference to regional and rural communities right across Australia, providing vital primary and emergency care they need,” he said.
Rural generalism has steadily risen in popularity as an intended career path for medical students over the past several years, with ACRRM maxing out its allotted training places for three years in a row.
According to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, around a quarter of the 1800 GP registrars who commenced training in 2025 are on track to become specialist RGs.
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Dr Martin said he was confident that ACRRM’s rural generalist program would be approved as appropriate.
“We’re very comfortable and very confident that – with the program that we have right here, right now, today – anyone who walks out of the door with a fellowship from ACRRM are very clearly an RG,” he said.
Fellowed doctors who work to a clear RG scope of practice but haven’t necessarily done the current ACRRM RG assessments or who followed a different pathway to rural generalism would also have a pathway to RG recognition.
“We’re trying to make sure that … we’ve got a nice, straightforward, transparent process for recognition,” Dr Martin said.
Only medical practitioners with specialist registration in rural generalist medicine will be able to use the title ‘specialist rural generalist’.
The ACRRM rural generalist training pathway includes three years of core generalist training in both primary and secondary care and an additional year of advanced specialised training in one of 12 disciplines.
The 12 ACRRM advanced training disciplines are: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, academic practice, adult internal medicine, anaesthetics, emergency medicine, mental health, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, palliative care, population health, remote medicine and surgery.
For RACGP registrars to become rural generalists, they must first complete the regular three-year RACGP GP training program as well as 12 months of advanced skills training and six months of core emergency medicine training.
The RACGP offers all the same advanced skills disciplines as ACRRM, bar population health.
Medical Board of Australia chair Dr Susan O’Dwyer said the recognition of rural generalism was “one thread in a tapestry of initiatives” to improve health services in rural Australia.
National Rural Health Commissioner Professor Jenny May thanked the ACRRM and RACGP-led joint taskforce, as well as “all those across the health sector who contributed to this achievement”.
Palliative Care Australia CEO Camilla Rowland called RG recognition a “win for every rural, remote and First Nations family”.
“In recognising rural generalist medicine as a specialty, we’re taking an important step toward ensuring compassionate, quality palliative care can happen closer to home, where people feel safe, connected, and surrounded by community,” she said.
This article was updated on Monday 22 September to add additional comment from AHPRA, the National Rural Health Commissioner and Palliative Care Australia.
