Page109 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 2 December 2020
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up. Canberra Health Services has already implemented around 38 of those recommendations.
I can go through a list of some of the things that have already been done to address the issues that Mrs Jones has identified. They include ensuring dedicated teaching time during working hours for physician trainees; restructuring rosters to allow for better work-life balance; implementing a leave management plan that takes exam preparation into account and ensures that trainees are able to take their leave as entitled; committing to improving and implementing trainee wellbeing programs modelled on successful interstate examples, including individualised pastoral care, mentoring and career development; and establishing a junior trainee mentoring program, rolling out in December, this month, to coincide with the new intake of employees in February 2021.
They also include one-on-one meetings with each trainee to explore professional development support, identify individual stressors and reflect on systems improvement; increased participation across the network by senior medical practitioners in medical handover meetings and other physician training activities where teaching and fostering of workplace relationships occur; increasing accessibility to teaching activities for junior and senior medical staff by offering multimodal technology options; and revision of the clinical exam preparation structure to be in line with comparable successful training networks. Canberra Health Services is also recruiting additional medical registrars for 2021, which will help to reduce overtime and contribute to covering annual and study leave.
Several appointments have been made to address structural issues identified in the report. A senior medical registrar was appointed in mid-2019 and has proven a valuable resource, assisting with pastoral care for trainees and examination preparation support. The recent appointment of the ACT Network Director of Physician Education, Dr Ashwin Swaminathan, to the role of Clinical Director of the Division of Medicine at CHS creates a valuable link between physician trainees and the senior physician staff and has been well received by both groups.
The appointment of Dr Kathryn Daveson to the position of Director of Physician Education at CHS provides support to Dr Swaminathan and renewed focus on the training issues specific to Canberra Health Services. Dr Daveson has a proven track record of implementing quality and safety programs nationally.
Dr Swaminathan will work with CHS’s new Executive Director of Medical Services, Dr Nick Coatsworth. Dr Coatsworth is himself a physician and an RACP—Royal Australasian College of Physicians—education supervisor and examiner. He is, as he has said publicly, keen to support an ambitious program of quality training for ACT physician trainees to ensure that the organisation’s reputation is enhanced as a training centre for its future medical workforce.
All these senior staff are working towards real change in the physician training program and are actively nurturing an improved relationship between CHS’s training physicians and their senior colleagues.
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