The college has launched its first Workforce Insights Report showcasing the highs and lows of the national GP workforce.
The need for investment into the GP workforce has been backed up today with the launch of the RACGP’s inaugural National GP Workforce Insights Report.
Touted as “groundbreaking” by college president Dr Michael Wright, the report looks at national GP accessibility and workforce distribution.
“The college is investing people and time and money into a workforce capacity, and this was the first step of that,” RACGP rural chair Associate Professor Michael Clements told The Medical Republic.
“We should absolutely expect more reporting and more insight.
“I can’t promise it’ll be annual, but certainly, this is the data that the board has been asking for to help guide our own decision makings as a board member, but also it helps inform our advocacy and our consultation with government.”
Each state has shown welcome improvements in how the GP workforce is distributed.
Incentivised placements were the key contributor to this, with rural health receiving a needed boost to workforce retention as a result of the initiative.
However, the college is continuing to push for non-monetary benefits like housing for doctors in rural and remote areas.
“We need to make sure the [federal] government’s working with us and the state governments [are] working with us as well,” Professor Clements told TMR.
“There are some good successes in Queensland communities where the state government is paying salaries or using things like the single employer model, but also upstream they’re even employing them after fellowship, whereas other states, like New South Wales rely on employed GPs less.
“Each town is going to need a different solution, we need to make sure that we correctly identify the targeted areas.
“We need to collaborate with the councils and the other agencies, because each of us will have different levers that we can pull.”
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According to the report, retirement is looming for at least 40% of the GP workforce, which has raised concerns on how the workforce can be sustained numbers wise amidst other concerns.
“It’s certainly pleasing to see that we’ve got significant numbers of registrars coming into the system,” Professor Clements told TMR.
“The report also points out that many of our rural and regional communities are more reliant on trainees than the urban areas, so this is the future generations coming to fill those gaps.
“But that is putting pressure on supervision capacity, and we know that we don’t have enough supervision capacity in some communities to meet the trainee need.
“We need to be aware of the squeeze and the crunch that’s coming with that, but it’s not a cause for alarm, it just needs to be fed into our systems and planning.”
It is for this reason that the report does highlight the need for further support to GP supervisors to assist with managing the steady flow of fresh GPs.
Bringing fresh GPs has also been prioritised for rural health, with the RACGP advocating for universities to better target rural health for the benefit of GP outcomes.
“The fact that we’ve still got 29% of IMGs practising outside practising outside of the city is good, but that’s an area that we need to target and grow more,” Professor Clements told TMR.
Additions to the report can be expected in the future, with the college currently investing into establishing a research workforce to better inform policy decisions.
