Why supervise?
Supervising medical students in general practice demonstrates the commitment of our profession to supporting quality lifelong learning of our colleagues at the beginning of their medical careers, and ultimately for the benefit of the health of the community.
Medical student teaching in the general practice setting in Australia is also increasing.
Providing quality supervision helps to maximise the benefits of education, but also lays the foundations for positive experiences for lifelong learning, professionalism and patient care.
GPs interested in supervising GP registrars or examining may also be interested in visiting the RACGP page Medical Educators.
For further enquires about these resources or supervision of medical students email: racgpeducation@racgp.org.au tel: 1800 472 247 | international: +61 (3) 8699 0300.
Resources
The resources below provide guidance for GPs supervising medical students and prevocational doctors in the general practice setting.
The resources provided here will be particularly useful for the many experienced GPs who are motivated to teach, but may have had limited training in teaching:
This booklet is designed for use by GPs and the primary care team to assess their suitability and capability to take on the responsibility for supervising medical students and prevocational doctors:
This article by Dr James Best uses a case study to illustrate key aspects of supervising medical students in general practice:
This article describes the key aspects of patient and financial management when trainees are present in the practice and suggests solutions to potential issues:
Practice teaching tips for busy clinicians from a series of articles originally published in the Medical Journal of Australia. These also include hospital training, but the principles apply to supervision in the general practice setting. Each topic focuses on how the clinical environment provides enormous opportunities for effective experiential learning.