G'day, my name's Aaron Hollins, I'm a GP and Medical Educator and Senior Lecturer with
JCU. Clinically I work at Doomadgee for Gidgee
Healing and I also work here in Atherton for GMT and JCU.
So look I got interested in public health when I was a junior doctor and I worked in
places like Doomadgee and Mornington Island and I realised that we needed to have a broader
look at what's happening with people’s health. So once I completed my GP training I went
onto undertake public health training as well, which I've recently completed. With my public
health training I work for the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council, as
well as the Public Health Unit in Cairns. This advanced skills training in population
health is ideally suited to registrars who want to stay in their rural and remote town,
want to have a look at their community from a broader perspective and also might have
an interest in public health and further qualifications in public health.
So you can do an advanced skills training in population health with ACRRM and they have
a well-recognised curriculum to do that. For registrars enrolled with RACGP we need to
contact the rural centre and get permission from them to undertake advanced training in
population health. This advanced skills training in population
health takes twelve months to complete. You can take a bit longer, particularly because
there are some requirements to do an epidemiology course as part of that advanced training.
So registrars need to talk to their medical educator in their local node and apply through
the GMT placement process to do advanced skills training in population health. They also then
need to apply to their respective college. So the assessment for advanced skill training
in population health is mainly around a project that you need to complete. So that project
is almost like a research project but it can also be a health promotion project, it can
be a community needs analysis or an audit of practice. The other assessment that you
need to do as part of this, a formative and summative supervisor feedback and you also
need to complete an epidemiology course. Having done an advanced skill post in population
health gives you really transferable skills so you can work in any setting that you like
in rural and remote Australia. It's given you the skills to have a big picture look
at what you're doing as part of your practice. So keeping your skills current may involve
completion of a Masters in Public Health or equivalent but you can also do CPD through
your respective colleges that do concentrate on population health.
So whilst you're undertaking advanced skill training in population health you'll still
work in clinically. This AST does allow you to take a step back and have a look at that
bigger picture. So you have an academic supervisor who has, has specialist qualifications in
public health or a Masters degree in Public Health as well as a clinical supervisor who
has qualifications in rural health. So I undertook extra additional training in
public health because I have a passion for the bigger picture I guess. So I felt by undertaking
public health training I could make a bigger difference on a bigger scale.
So registrars who do advanced training in population health they have broader skills
then just what the AST provides them. They can do research, they can be very competent
at auditing their practice, they will also be able to look at their community quite broadly
and take that with them where ever they go. Doing advanced training in population health
really equips you where ever you go to work because it gives you those skills where you
look at that big picture and look at what the community needs. One of the registrars
who's done advanced training in population health went on to work for the World Health
Organisation in Geneva, so that's the sort of thing you can look at if you undertake
this training.