What it means to be an RACGP Life Member

On 11 October RACGP Queensland held its Annual Member Meeting and Celebration of General Practice, where 68 Queensland GPs were awarded as RACGP Life Members for recognition of 35 years’ continuous membership.
 
newsGP spoke to two of these recipients about what it means to be a Life Member and their experiences, including the highlights and challenges, over the years.
 
Dr Steve Hambleton
From a decades-spanning career, Brisbane GP Dr Steve Hambleton can recount many standouts which highlight the breadth of general practice.
 
But it was during his second year after graduating, working as a rural locum, that he first realised he wanted to become a GP.

'My first deep exposure to general practice was as a locum in a rural town as the medical superintendent with the right of private practice and I experienced the life of a country doctor,’ Dr Hambleton told newsGP.  

‘I delivered babies, transported a young girl with a head injury in the back of an ambulance for three hours to get one of the new-fangled CT head scans. I treated the locals, and on a couple of occasions, even their dogs. 
 
‘I remember being embraced by the community in a way that I had never experienced before – I knew then general practice was for me.’
 
And the RACGP has been there every step of the way.
 
‘My college has supported me from early days when I participated in the general practice training program, which ended in the Certificate of Satisfactory Completion of Training and is still on my wall,’ Dr Hambleton said.
 
After completing his training, Dr Hambleton joined the GP supervisors group where he connected with like-minded GPs and many ‘up and coming excellent’ general practice registrars in the initial phases of their career. 
 
He then joined, and eventually became a partner in, a medical centre in Brisbane alongside a country GP from Dalby.
 
Open 24 hours, the clinic treated families, sports people and shift workers, and also had radiology, pharmacy, allied health and visiting specialists on site. They reduced and set fractures, relocated dislocated shoulders, and learnt to interpret their own X-rays.
 
‘We had a close working relationship with the non-GP specialists who visited our rooms – an urban “generalist” you might say,’ he said.
 
Fast forward some years and Dr Hambleton decries certain changes to the way healthcare is delivered, recounting the time when things started to shift.
 
‘Emergency rooms opened at night in private hospitals and our 24-hour service in the city was no longer needed,’ he said.
 
‘Radiology could not afford to service a plain film site as a standalone service, particularly when injured sportspeople were diverted to much more expensive emergency rooms.’  
 
An ongoing health system reform priority for the RACGP, Dr Hambleton also sees funding as a ‘huge challenge’ facing general practice.
 
‘It’s a loss of various parts of what we, GPs, can do,’ he said.
 
‘The changing needs of the health system, our out-of-date funding system that has misused and leveraged off our intimate relationship with our patients to keep prices down, means that many GPs discount their services to their own detriment in the interests of their patients.’
 
To help address some of the challenges, Dr Hambleton has worked with the RACGP on health reform since 2009 when he was elected Australian Medical Association (AMA) Vice President, and later President. 
 
As Chief Clinical Advisor for the Australian Digital Health Agency, he continues to work alongside college leaders in health reform, including President Dr Nicole Higgins, and presented at last year’s RACGP General Practice Crisis Summit in Canberra.
 
When asked how he envisions the future of general practice, Dr Hambleton says it is something ‘we all need to work on’. 
 
‘GPs are specialists in primary care and need to be freed up to deliver that,’ he said.
 
‘We need to move the health system from a sick-care system to a healthcare system. Everyone needs to be able to nominate their GP in their preferred practice.’
 
Characteristics of the practice population need to drive the level of investment, according to Dr Hambleton, who believes it should be just as easy, or profitable, to work in Western Sydney as it is in Mossman.
 
‘The health system must feel like one health system both to us and to our patients,’ he said. 
 
‘We should no longer be surprised by poorly thought-out solutions, new silos of care or funding models that compete with the model of care that we know works.
 
‘Each new policy or funding proposal should be tested against the Quadruple Aim and deliver more integrated care not more fragmentation.’
 
As a 35-year member of the RACGP, Dr Hambleton says he needs the future of general practice to be strong.
 
‘Chances are I am going to need my GP’s help pretty soon to stay well and stay healthy,’ he said.
 
But for now, it is a ‘great honour’ to be awarded Life Membership. 
 
‘I value the excellent broad-based training and the ability to engage with your peers – even in practices today I feel more and more like an independent contractor rather than part of a team,’ he said.
 
‘I have benefited from being a college member in so many ways.’
 
Dr Jon Cafferky
When awarded his Life Membership of the RACGP, Dr Jon Cafferky’s first thought was, ‘where did the time go?’.
 
‘The awarding was not expected but welcome – humbling and received with some pride,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘What I value most from my membership is the college’s advocacy to government over multiple issues in recent years … [and] the high-quality education publications and educational events produced by the college.’
 
From his 35 years as a member of the college, the south Brisbane GP has many highlights, including building over 25 years a ‘quality, well-regarded’ group general practice, Calamvale Medical Centre.
 
‘I’ve been fortunate in being able to practice alongside wonderful GPs as well seeing the development of many registrars through our training at the practice,’ Dr Cafferky said.
 
‘And realising that for many of my patients I have made a difference.’
 
Together with the rewards, Dr Cafferky’s general practice journey has not been without its challenges.
 
Among those he echoes Dr Hambleton by citing the lack of appropriate funding for general practice as an ongoing hurdle, as well as keeping up with new medications and best practice, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
‘General practice’s pandemic response – including testing, consultations, and mass vaccination [was a significant challenge],’ he said. ‘One pandemic is enough for a GP’s career.’
 
Dr Cafferky is optimistic about the future of general practice.
 
‘General practice in Australia will survive, and the majority of GPs in large hubs incorporating allied health with GPs centrally,’ he said.
 
‘[But] government must support general practice by providing reasonable fee-for-service funding.’
 
All RACGP National Award winners were officially announced at WONCA on Wednesday 25 October.
 
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