General Practice is a small but growing body of dedicated clinical academics, primary care researchers and support staff.
It has a growing role in the Faculty delivering community-based medical education and an expanding portfolio of primary care research.
Academic general practice at UWA began in 1977 when the Faculty established a new department and Chair of General Practice, the first-named Chair of General Practice in Australia.
In 2004 Professor Jon Emery moved from the University of Cambridge to take up the Chair of General Practice at UWA. Under his leadership there have been significant developments in research and teaching in General Practice.
Teaching
The Discipline of General Practice has input into the teaching of medical students in all six years of the medical course at UWA.
In the first three years General Practice contributes to the Foundations of Clinical Practice, an integrated unit delivered with Population Health and Behavioural Sciences. The Discipline also coordinates the graduate entry bridging course (GEMP) that, once completed, allows graduate students to enter the third year of the medical course.
Foundations of Clinical Practice and GEMP provide early clinical experience looking at why patients attend doctors, the effects of illness on the patient, family and community and the teaching of basic clinical skills including communication, consulting and physical examination skills. In addition, clinical skills also provides a contextual learning environment for the teaching of basic sciences - anatomy, for example - thus allowing integration of knowledge from a number of disciplines.
Students are given multiple opportunities for community and general practice engagement with placements in residential aged care facilities and general practices. The majority of clinical tutors are actively practicing GPs who facilitate clinical skills while providing positive role modeling for general practice.
More recently, General Practice has led the development and piloting of the Outer Urban Clinical School, with an initial base at Joondalup Health Campus. The Outer Urban Clinical School is one of the new strategies in response to increased medical student numbers and reflects a new approach to teaching fourth-year psychiatry across the primary-secondary care interface.
The fifth-year General Practice unit uses problem-based learning to focus on the presentation and diagnosis of the 20 most common illnesses in general practice and on more complex consultation skills with the use of standardised patients.
In addition, this eight-week unit allows for greater clinical exposure in general practice as the students spend three sessions per week in clinical placement. The discipline has engaged with more than 175 general practices to provide an exciting opportunity for students to experience general practice.
The sixth-year rural general practice program is a collaboration between the Discipline of General Practice and the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia. The engagement with the network of rural GPs in Western Australia from Esperance in the south to Kununurra in the north, and all points east and west, allows each student to immerse themselves in a rural community for a five-week term.
The students welcome the opportunity to act as pre-interns and to hone their consultation and practical skills in a safe but challenging environment. The rural experience is often an inspiring one that encourages students to consider rural procedural practice as a career choice.
General Practice also has a coordinating role in sixth-year campus weeks.
The overlap that occurs in the presentation of patients across the disciplines of emergency medicine, psychiatry and general practice has given an opportunity to provide two weeks of integrated teaching for the sixth-year students.
Campus weeks also allow the students to come together on campus as a cohort as they have been disseminated to the tertiary hospitals or on rural general practice during their sixth year. The students observe and study integrated cases, and the Discipline of General Practice focuses on providing practical skills workshops.
Current teaching at General Practice
University information
CRICOS Code: 00126G
