Five simple self-directed CPD options

Explore the Five layers of learning Cultural and Health, Education and Training serpent. The training serpent describes the continuous improvement cycle that deepens and enriches a GP’s awareness, knowledge and skills in providing care that is culturally safe for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients. 

This serpent identifies five layers of learning as concepts starting from relational, immersion, scaffolding through to reinforcing and connection. 

Think about where you are in the five layers of learning.

If you’re new to practising in Australia, you may be at the relational and immersion phases of learning. Even the most experienced GP may feel like you’re an international medical graduate upon commencing work in a new community. In many ways you might be, especially if you’re on different country. 

Consider what is it that helps you understand and comes to terms with the local community’s language, history and customs?

How can you ensure you provide quality and effective clinical care in a way that fits within the local community’s established values, ways of knowing, being and doing?

Log your activity 

This activity is a recommendation contained in Chapter 1 of fourth edition of the National Guide to preventive healthcare for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.  

Eight ways have developed a framework for you to approach your identity map. Take the time to reflect on any of these ways (of being, of doing, of knowing and valuing) and consider how you can approach conversations with your patients about their ways (of being, of doing, of knowing and valuing).

• Ways of being – this examines

  • Where do you belong? Who do you belong to?
  • How do you know that something is real?
  • List some categories of the things you know are real in this world.
  • From the following sets, select the land orientations you feel most comfortable with:
  • Saltwater / freshwater
    High ground / low ground
    Hills / plains / ridges / mountains / coast
    Open country / forest
    Wet / dry
    Red soil / black soil
    Sand / dirt / rock
    Warm / cool
    Fur / feathers / scales / fins
    Wood / rock / earth / wind / fire
  • Where are your ancestors from and how do you connect with them?
  • How are you accountable for maintaining relationships with ancestors, people and the environment? (What are your personal consequences for damaging these relationships?)
  • How will the knowledge you have learned in this life be passed on, and to whom?
  • What things in your life-world must change, and what things must always stay the same?

• Ways of doing

  • How did you know the answers to the questions so far – how did you learn these things?
  • Sketch a diagram of the way you solve problems. What shape does this take for you?
  • When you access knowledge from memory, what form does that take in your head? (e.g. images, sounds, print, language, shapes)
  • What are the stories that have had the biggest impact on how you relate to the world around you? (Might be books, films, oral histories, fables etc.)
  • What symbols are most meaningful for you? (e.g. crucifix, tag, icon, flag)
  • How do these symbols inform your life and work?
  • What sorts of things do you know implicitly, without having to be taught?
  • Do the answers to any of these questions make you want to change any of your answers back in section 1? (Because our ways of knowing shape our ways of being.)

• Ways of knowing

  • Do you learn new knowledge best with others, for others, alone, or for yourself?
  • Do you internalise new knowledge through dialogue, reflection or both?
  • Do you achieve learning outcomes at the end of a process, or during the process?
  • What are the signs you look for to know if what you are doing is right?
  • What does it usually take for you to change your mind about something?
  • What tools do you use for teaching and learning?
  • What are your main cultural practices, your ways of expressing your culture (e.g. singing, sport, events, rituals)? How do these cultural practices impact on the way you do your work?

• Ways of valuing

  • What is truth?
  • What would be your top three rules for living? Top three for learning?
  • What is the most important thing in the world to you?
  • How did you learn your values? Where did they come from?

Log your activity 

This activity is a recommendation contained in Chapter 1 of fourth edition of the National Guide to preventive healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  

Finding your Way is a shared decision-making model created with mob, for mob. It's a holistic, two-way process, learn how it can be used by Aboriginal people and their healthcare providers to yarn and make decisions together.

Familiarise yourself with this framework and supporting resources (including short videos) and consider how you can incorporate aspects of this in your work. This activity is good for individual GPs and practice teams.

Explore the Finding your Way resource.

Log your activity 

Improve the accuracy of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander patient status records and proactively offer appropriate preventative health assessments (MBS Item 715). Current AIHW data indicates that 21.9% of GP records lack Indigenous status information (July 2024). PIP QI data set

Accurate identification ensures culturally appropriate care and access to vital Medicare programs (e.g., MBS Item 715, PIP Indigenous Health Incentive). It facilitates tailored care, including referrals to Integrated Chronic Care teams and consideration of historical factors like the Stolen Generations.

Building rapport through respectful inquiry about identity strengthens the patient-provider relationship and improves health outcomes.

Step 1 – Identify patient records where Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status

Review your data to identify patient records where Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status is unknown. This can be done by yourself or others in your practice. This audit fulfills part of the PIP QI data set requirements. Refer to Identification of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian general practice .

Recall Patient and confirm status.

Log your hours (or a member of you practice team may record this for you on your behalf using GP-led form).

LOG YOUR ACTIVITY 

Step 2 – Recall patients (5hrs MO)

For GPs, review the list of patients where you do not know their Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Status. Identify those patients that benefit most from a recall. Ie. Which patients would you treat differently if you knew their status? (Immunisation, cancer screening, CVD checks, Diabetes and Kidney disease checks).

Recall 5 patients, and record using the RACGP’s measuring outcomes tool to record your activity for 5hrs MO.

LOG Your ACTIVITY