The time I waste on so-called ‘valuable’ forms of learning is not to be believed.
I have been spending the last month trying to contort useful medical education for GPs into the requirements that are specified by AHPRA.
There are many things I can say about doctors, but they are certainly able to learn.
The rationale for dictating the form learning should take has always been, according to the lead of AHPRA at the time, “so that doctors keep up to scratch”.
This would be helpful, if in general practice we could define what “scratch” was in the multi-morbid chaos we work in.
The other rationale is always that there are “some doctors” who do “low-value CPD” and need to be regulated into doing more “valuable” forms of learning.
What it means for the rest of us is scrambling to complete activities that have little relevance to us, simply to keep the board placated.
I wondered if I was just getting old and cranky, after all the many and varied ways I’ve endured people telling me how to learn/practice/bill/collaborate etc, etc, this year.
So, I looked at the “evidence” behind these rigid requirements.
There is a large document. There are 85 references. Eighty-four of them are over a decade old. The lone reference that is nine years old is in orthopaedics.
A third of the references are from last century and, roughly, say that didactic teaching isn’t as good as more interactive, patient-centred teaching, which we have always known.
On the basis of this document, I have to find a certain number of “measuring outcomes” and “reviewing performance” activities, which is all very well for non-GP specialists who work in institutions with research units, but a lot harder for rural GPs on maternity leave.
Hence me writing things that I hope might be in some way useful by satisfying criteria that have no relevance to the work that GPs do.
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We even have to do “one” activity in several areas: inequity, professionalism, ethics, and culture. I have no problem with any of these areas, but what is “one”? No one defines it. No one counts it anywhere. It’s just … there.
Honestly, can we just get on with things?
There are SO MANY things I need to keep up with. Doing an audit doesn’t help me. The orthopods might find it helpful, but the literature isn’t exactly overwhelming.
Associate Professor Louise Stone is a working GP who researches the social foundations of medicine in the ANU Medical School. She tweets @GPswampwarrior.
