Until now, rural GPs interested in upskilling could only get funding for in-person or fully online training.
An update to the long-running Rural Procedural Grants Program now supports courses that take advantage of both the world wide web and in-person training sessions to upskill GPs in emergency medicine, emergency mental health or procedural work.
The program, which has been running since 2004, provides GPs working in MM3-7 locations with grants to subsidise the cost of some CPD and training to allow them to enhance their procedural and emergency medicine skills.
Eligible doctors can get up to $2000 per day for participating in face-to-face training or $1000 per day for online-only training.
For the new hybrid training stream, which only began this month, the daily rate provided by the grant is $1500.
Face-to-face is defined as a minimum of six hours in-person training in one day or a minimum of four hours in-person and two hours online training in one day.
Online training is defined as a minimum of four hours online interactive training in one day.
Hybrid training, for the purposes of the grants program, is a minimum of three hours in-person and three hours online training per day.
The most grant funding that a GP can claim in one year is $20,000 for procedural training and $6000 each for emergency medicine and emergency mental health training.
Related
Only vocationally registered GPs and registrars can participate, and that is only if their principal clinical practice is physically located in an MM3-7 region.
It is also conditional on fellowed GPs having unsupervised clinical privileges in either surgery, anaesthetics, emergency medicine or obstetrics at an MM3-7 hospital, and for GP registrars to have pre-existing qualifications in one of surgery, anaesthetics or obstetrics or to have successfully completed 12 months of Advanced Specialised Training or Additional Rural Skills Training in Emergency Medicine.
GPs and registrars who only do minor emergency and/or procedural work in their rooms or in an attached outpatient clinic are not eligible for the grant funding.
Another recent change to the program is that some CPD activities undertaken overseas through a face-to-face model of training are eligible to be subsidised using the grant funding.
Only pre-approved activities that are not available to be undertaken in Australia or are difficult to attend in Australia are eligible.
