The college’s ‘bold’ new strategy focuses on four pillars to get the profession through a crucial moment in general practice.
The RACGP has released what it calls a “bold plan to further enhance general practice” over the next five years, which will aim toward goals like a strong GP workforce and impactful advocacy.
Board chair Dr Sian Goodson called the strategy document, which takes the college through to 2029, a “strong step forward” that will “stretch [the college’s] focus toward an emerging sustainable and successful future for general practice care”.
There are four parts to the strategic focus: an outstanding fellowship, a flourishing GP workforce, a future-ready profession and general practice at the heart of the health system.
Priorities under the fellowship banner include lifelong learning, practice viability, international medical graduate experience and member benefits, with the goals of professional excellence and a connected community.
Driving the goals of a strong GP workforce and quality training are priorities like a desirable profession, GP workforce distribution and funded training places.
The future-ready profession column identified digital technologies, innovation leadership and research culture as priorities to achieve the goals of future-ready GPs and research and innovation growth.
For keeping general practice at the heart of the health system, the goals are impactful advocacy and effective influence, to be driven by thought leadership, health economics, government relations and advocacy networks.
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Dr Goodson told The Medical Republic that operational plans would be where the granular detail on how to meet each priority and goal is developed and emphasised that the strategy had been developed in consultation with members.
“We’re looking to the future and we’re trying to ensure that we’ve got a workforce into the future, that we’ve got sustainable careers that are well remunerated and that business models in general practice are also sustainable,” she said.
“Things are changing fast in general practice.
“We need to think about innovation, we need to think about new technologies and make sure we’re at the forefront of all these opportunities for GPs.”
The reason that the next five years in particular will be critical, Dr Goodson said, related to the scope of practice review, the multiple threats to practice viability and the different political aspirations for general practice.
Research plays a strong role in this vision.
“[This is about] making sure that everyone who works within the college is pushing in the same direction and working to the same goals,” she said.
“It’s also about trying to stretch our future-focused approach around the area of research – what we haven’t seen is really strong general practice research or enough money given to general practice research.
“We’re targeting that as an area we want to see develop.”
To that end, the college has also recently joined the National Multidisciplinary Primary Care Research, Policy and Advocacy Consortium.
The RACGP’s 2025-29 strategy is separate to the advocacy plan it released last year, which saw the college launch an advocacy network.
