The NCGPT Training Program
Led by Dr Christine Ahern, NCGPT’s Director of Training, the NCGPT education program is known for being innovative, contemporary, and of a high quality. We understand that adult learners learn best when they are engaged in, and can relate the teaching to their own experiences.
The education sessions range from hands-on practical emergency medicine to Nicola’s light-hearted but incredibly effective “Barbie-demonstrating-contraception-through-the-ages” sessions to Rob’s film looking at the intricacy of the relationship between homeless youth and GP registrars and Hilton’s sessions on palliative care where registrars are taken on a journey through “Enduring Witness” (a DVD teaching tool that explores the complex relationship between a GP and his dying patient). Taken together they make for an interesting and thoroughly entertaining and interactive learning experience for our registrars!
GP wellbeing is at the heart of our training program, giving our registrars skills that will sustain them throughout their careers as GPs. In addition to building the ideas of balance, perspective and wellbeing into the overall education program, our educators invest a lot of their time and energy into supporting their peers and registrars. Hilton Koppe is regularly involved in running a variety of educational events designed to support and sustain the wellbeing of participants. They include:
- Wellbeing sessions at conferences and workshops which provide participants with insights and skills to assist in improving their own wellbeing,
- “Beyond the Medical Record” creative writing workshops, designed to assist participants to gain greater understanding of what it means to be a doctor through the use of creative writing exercises,
- Balint workshops, a structured forum for de-briefing and learning from challenging patient encounters,
- “Enduring Witness” workshops which uses a NCGPT produced DVD to issues faced by GPs caring for dying patients,
- Regular articles in North Coast Post, Australian Doctor and Australian Family Physician on wellbeing matters.
The NSW GP Procedural Training Program is also available which gives registrar’s access to a number of diverse, well supported procedural training opportunitiess in the disciplines of Emergency, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Anaesthetics and Mental health, to enhance their training and prepare them for rural and remote general practice.
Our regional medical educators are located at all three training nodes throughout the North Coast including Ballina, Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie. Their role is to help registrars achieve their learning objectives, provide advice on training needs and undertake External Clinical Teaching (ECT) and Training Appraisal (TA) Visits.
In addition to our ME team, we also have a fantastic network of accredited teaching practices and a team of over 90 dedicated supervisors across the North Coast who teach and mentor our registrars at every step of their in-practice training.
Our GP Supervisors play a central role in the delivery of training and support to the registrars working in their practices. Delivering the majority of teaching, they provide registrars with one-on-one teaching, supervision, support, feedback and advice. Importantly, our Medical Education team also run regular education events for our supervisors and also ensure that they are well supported so they, in turn, can support our registrars to become confident GPs.
