AGPT practice and supervisor handbook

For supervisors

Provide orientation and initial supervision

Last revised: 27 Mar 2024

Provide orientation and initial supervision

A well-planned, comprehensive orientation to the practice and the local environment is an essential task for the supervisory team to undertake together with the practice manager and other practice staff.

Registrars starting their first term in general practice should receive an extensive orientation. It is recommended they don’t start seeing patients on their first day in practice. Registrars come to your practice with varying levels of experience and clinical competency. Particularly for registrars in their first general practice term (GPT1), close monitoring and providing support in the first few weeks in the practice is essential.

GPT1 registrars must undergo an Early Assessment for Safety and Learning (EASL) in the first four weeks. As part of the EASL process all consultation records are reviewed until you are confident this is no longer required. A selection of the reviewed records are discussed with your registrar as part of the daily case review component of EASL. For more information about EASL, refer to Contribute to assessment.

Once you are confident that the registrar no longer requires review of every day, they need some guidance about when they are expected to call for supervision. To help inform this discussion, your registrar will have received the ‘call for help’ list – a list of clinical problems that past registrars and supervisors have considered warrant a call for help. Your registrar has also been asked to complete a self-assessment of their confidence to manage these clinical problems. This self-assessment, combined with the EASL for GPT1 registrars, and your knowledge of your registrar’s previous experience should inform a conversation about when they should call for help. The answer to the question ‘when should the registrar call for help?’ is one of the three questions to be answered to create your registrar’s clinical supervision plan.

TIP

Our recommended orientation checklist will help guide your orientation activities. We recommend downloading the file and changing it to suit your practice.

Advertising