Adult medicine basic physician training

Welcome everyone to this Queensland Basic Physician training network information evening both for those in the room and those online, I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands in which we're all meeting - for those in the room - that's the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, and pay my respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or Maori people here today.  As well as show my respect for those who've been custodians of this land for many, many years.
I'd like to welcome you all here tonight. Tonight's goal is to give you a chance to find out about the basic physician training network. A few housekeeping things for those in the room, toilets are outside just down the corridor, in the event of a fire, leave the auditorium and the event staff should direct you where to go.  But I think we assemble down there. If you're at home, hopefully you know where your toilet is and if there's a fire, please don't bring it up to our attention the Q&A do something called 000.
My name is Paul Jauncey I'm one of the physician training medical directors of the network.  I'm here with Spencer and Brian who are two of the other medical directors. We also have our network rotation coordinators or proxies who you meet throughout the night, as well as some of our network staff, and some representatives from the college, and the goal is to really quickly - there's a lot to cover tonight - go through some of the key aspects of basic physician training. Don't be afraid if we go through things, and you've got questions, there will be time for Q&As at the end and for those in the room, there's a chance to actually come up and ask us questions as there's lots of questions that may be very particular to your individual circumstances, and also if you have any questions, if something comes up after tonight, or you don't get a chance to ask a question tonight, or it doesn't get answered, please feel free to reach out to our physician training e-mail address to help you through this process.
So we'll start by just talking a little bit about the process of applying for basic physician training in Queensland, and so what I'm going to do in this first session is try and quickly go through how physician training works in Queensland, and the nuances of training in Queensland to find out a little bit about the different training rotations - little mini networks - which is what you're going to be hearing from each of those networks in turn tonight.  A brief outline of the selection and application process and at the end, as I said, there's a chance for you to go into more depth about any questions you might have.
Now we did receive some questions online before this meeting and there's just a few things we probably won't be able to cover tonight for a number of reasons. So, a fair few questions about specific college training requirements.  Feel free to reach out to Hannah and Tracey about these, but I just want to draw your attention, there is an RACP orientation held in November, which is a really good chance to find out about a lot, also go to the RACP website.
Lots of questions about some complex international medical graduate and visa scenarios we can touch on it briefly, but they can get very nuanced, so please reach out to us individually for that.
Lots of talk about what hospitals have which rotations.
We obviously don't have time to go through nearly 30 hospitals worth of rotations, but you can reach out to the network or the potential DPEs at that hospital to find out about that.
A few questions about joint training with ICU and things like that.  Again, probably just reach out to us because that gets very nuanced.  A few people asking about other states, application processes and in comparing contrasting, I probably can't speak for that too much because I'm just not as familiar.
It’s best going to those states to find out about that, and we'll talk a little bit about how to prepare for BPT. But I suggest that's something that's useful to talk about in your planning for training discussion.
So if you want to be a physician, I think this is the sort of process and the thoughts that you need to go through when thinking about how to apply for physician training.
So first thing, think about are you eligible and the key things that is you need to hold general registration or be likely and be expected to hold that by February 2026, which means you've got the AMC clinical date or you're likely to be finished your WBA program by then, be eligible for registration with the RACP as a Basic Physician trainee and in Queensland we have a requirement that your PGY3 to start training because that's actually how our training programs are designed and they're not really well set up for PGY2's.
So generally, the process of basic physician training and what you're thinking about signing up to tonight, you've got your pre vocational 2 years of training where you get exposed to medical and non-medical terms in three years of basic physician training.  Really, I think if you're signing up to basic physician training, I think a good thing is to sort of be expecting to be about 25% of your time in nights relieving terms, which would probably be better than ICU or ED. But there certainly are nights there, don't want you going into that blind.
There's also workplace based assessments, which have changed a bit in 2025.  If you are talking to trainees, it's something to be mindful of there have been some changes in the college curriculum over the last year and then some written and clinical exams is probably something a lot of you've been hearing about BPT3.
So tonight we're talking about basic physician training, that process, Advanced training is a separate application process, but you need BPT to get your ticket to go into advanced training.  That's again three years, four years if you’re doing dual training with two subspecialties.  Workplace based assessments similar to what happens in BPT. The new curriculum is transferring over there, and there’s a big research project as well.  So, when I think of the stakeholders in BPT, it's sort of a joint effort between the College and Queensland Health and so the college sort of sets the standards, provides educational material, and provides tools that allow us to assess training.  Your DPE or Director of Physician Education, is sort of the college's representative in the training setting that you're working at, so they're normally employed by the training setting, but their job is to represent the college and help implement the college curriculum.
Then you've got your employing hospital it pays your salary, gives you the job, helps you, provides you with the resources - the patients - the education, and all the resources you need to do your vocational training program. Then us as the network and what we're talking about tonight is our job is sort of help as a Q Health representative, we are Q Health.
We work very closely with the college and we all hold multiple hats, but the network is a Q health body that's designed to help employing hospitals work together and collaborate in order to deliver physician training and what we create from that is a training program where you move between often move between different training settings to get a different variety of exposures and so there you might be working one year, and then another year in another hospital. Hopefully be completing that training program before the Death Stars blows up Alderaan, however.
So prior to applying to commence basic training.  So, this is if you haven't started training before, it's a little bit more nuanced if you've already in a training program. One of the key things, is make sure you go to the network page and just have a read through the network selection criteria and also the how to apply guide, and I say when you are actually applying through the RMO campaign, have that how to apply guide open, it basically steps you through the whole process.
Then think about what sort of network rotation you want to train at, and that's kind of one of the goals of tonight is to hear about the different rotations to help you make that choice, and then one of the things we do require in Queensland is we have a discussion with the DPE or RACP educational supervisor. If you're not sure who those are, you can find the DPEs on the college website or you can reach out to your BPT peers and they can help point you in the right direction to complete a planning physician training form.
Now, really importantly, that form is not a selection tool.
The reason we do that form is not for them to judge whether or not you're suitable for BPT.
It's basically just to encourage people to have a chat about the program they're signing up for, rather than sign up to a three-year program blind, have a chat to someone about what's important for you, and also start thinking about how you're going to shape your training. But it's not a pass / fail discussion.
It's something that they should sign for you as long as you have that discussion.

So, the network rotations which you are going to hear about tonight, there's five network rotations in Queensland. Far North is based out of Cairns Hospital, with a few small secondment hospitals. North Queensland's, based out of Townsville University Hospital with secondment to Mount Isa.  Then you've got Northside, which is one of the more complex rotations with three tertiary hospitals.  This one we're in today, Sunshine Coast Uni Hospital, Prince Charles. Some metropolitan level twos, Caboolture and Redcliffe regional level twos, Mackay, Rockhampton, and some secondment sites are on the Sunshine Coast, which is where I'm the DPE, by the way.

The Southside rotation is similar to the Northside, has three tertiary hospitals based around Brisbane, but what’s also interesting is that it’s got private hospitals in Greenslopes private and Mater Hospital. It's got metro level twos Ipswich, and Logan, and QEII and then the regional level twos and ones are Toowoomba, Bundaberg, and Hervey Bay. Coastal rotation's a bit more of a driveway set up with one Level 3 in Gold Coast but larger hospitals in terms of Logan, Redlands and Robina.
So what you should be thinking about tonight in terms of how to choose the rotation. I think there's some training factors and some lifestyle factors and this is just the tip of the iceberg. But training facts might be what rotations you can do, whether or not you’re prepared to do the flyaway rotations - if you sign up for a rotation with some fly away terms.  Remembering you are signing up to potentially go to those rotations, I think find about the work environment and that's what chatting to the previous trainees who are currently there is very useful. Think about certain subspecialties are pretty hard to get on some rotations but easier on others and also think about the size and nature of the hospitals.  There is also lifestyle factors.  Where do you want to live?  Where can my partner get a job?  Useful things, all things.  Where do I want to work in 5-6 years’ time? Because that's by working in a series of hospitals, a good chance of sort of pseudo interview for a job that you might get as an advanced trainee or Consultant. And then think what you want to do outside of medicine. If you want to do lots of surfing, then Cairns probably isn’t the place to go because the waves aren't that great, but diving is pretty good.

Now another question to ponder is what level to start at. In Queensland, where the option of starting as an SHO or resident level or at registrar level and sort of the rough rule of thumb, most PGY 3’s like SHO, most PGY 4's and above like registrar positions. The way I tend to counsel people when I'm doing that planning for physician training discussion is if you're the sort of person who really likes feeling sure and stepping in when you're safe, like if you go to a pool you're climbing in through the steps. Then then maybe SHO is more for you. If you're the sort of person who just does a big bomb dive and doesn't even look beforehand and you just you feel like if you don't challenge yourself, you don't stretch yourself. Then maybe registrar is for you.  Think about how much medical experience, how much critical care experience you've had? Talk to your supervisors about this, and also think sometimes the SHO allows you a bit more time to focus on a non-clinical role because you're doing sort of activities which might feel more comfortable with whereas stepping up to registrar, you'll probably be a bit stretched in those first six months and some facilities only have SHO roles.  Some facilities only have registrar roles and that might change it and because we are talking about an employment process, it is important if you're not aware that the registrar does have a higher pay rate. So, if that's important to you, you might want to consider that as well.
But overall, when you're having that physician planning training discussion, if you haven't discussed already, I strongly suggest that's something to discuss with your physicians.

So, in terms of how to apply, it's all done through the RMO campaign and basically there's an option, are you applying for a position of Queensland Basic Physician training network?  Just make sure it's adult medicine, not PAEDs, unless you want to be a paediatrician, in which case you probably came to the wrong night.  Make sure you hit yes, and then basically it takes you through a series of network questions that feeds into the selection criteria.  Now selection criteria is basically against these categories here, and there are the sort of things that basically you wouldn't be surprised if you're choosing a career in Basic Physician training.  These are the sort of things we see physician trainees exhibiting and hopefully you're seeing in the registrars.

The actual scoring breakdown is the interview, which is a multi mini station interview - which we'll talk about in a second - is with the majority of the scores 60%. The short statements which are actually asked as part of that application program, there's certain options that come up through the RMO campaign are worth 20%, it's not a creative writing essay, it's actually what you're saying is the experience you've had and the principles and the properties you're describing.
Regional experience counts for 10%, medical experience in medical terms - up to the middle of the year - counts for 5%, and referee reports count for 5%, and those are nominated through the RMO campaign and collected through the RMO campaign.

One question of things that's changed over the last couple years is that visa holders used to be ranked lower than permanent residents, but if you're currently working in Queensland so you've already got a visa and you and you're continuing on that visa, then you have work rights, you get ranked alongside other candidates. If you were coming from overseas, which doesn't happen too often, and you do need to be sponsored for a visa in order to start working in Australia then that's a bit more of a nuanced situation you might want to reach out to us.
The interviews are virtual, so you don't have to turn up to a hospital.  You can turn up to your own hospital, but you don't have to turn up anywhere special you just need somewhere with a quiet room with a computer, make sure it is a quiet room however, and it's in an MMI format so multi station format and what happens basically you sign in, you get moved between each of the interview stations. You don't have to do anything techy on the day.  It takes about two hours all said from starting signing on, to signing off, so you don't need to take the whole day off if you don't want to.
It includes clinical and professional questions about things that are commonly experienced as BPT's. If in the event we think you're not suitable based on the interview score, you will be notified, and you do get a chance for some feedback on the interview, however we don't have time to give everyone feedback - because there's hundreds of people across the state.
These are the interview dates which can be found on the network website.
So I really suggest you check that out if you know which rotation you're applying to, just make sure you sort of earmark them. Try and make sure you're around,  we have had people dial in from France and all sorts of things at two in the morning, but if you can make sure you're available, it's going to be a lot more pleasant.
So what happens from all this process is we get these selection outcomes and so some people don't quite meet the standard at interview and they're the not suitable, and they're notified very early on in the piece, so they can re-preference through the RMO campaign.  Then, if you're suitable, depending on the number of applicants for an individual rotation determines whether or not you get selected into your Reg or SHO position, and if you don't quite make the bar of a Reg, but there's SHO vacancies, you can still get that, the applications are valid for each of the different levels. So, say there's 70 positions in the rotation and 80 people apply the top 70 ranked people get those positions they get offered, say you're suitable and you're selected to X rotation, are you happy to accept it?  Those 10 people who didn't get the position, assuming all those 70 people take their jobs, will be offered a position in an alternate rotation that has some vacancies. So, it's not like you have to interview for each rotation. If you interview for an oversubscribed rotation, another rotation has availabilities, and we tend to go by your preference order – we'll offer you a position there.  So, one interview is good for all the rotations across the state. In the event we're completely oversubscribed throughout the state, then there is a wait list process and sometimes people later on, decline the interview, decline the offer, in which case we might offer it to you there.

A lot of people ask about the competitiveness of different rotations.  It's a bit tricky because it just comes down to the labour market test so far.  Generally, there is vacant capacity in Queensland, but there a lot of people signed on tonight so we really don't know until the RMO campaign runs, and for historically last year, Northside and Coastal were oversubscribed, but that can change from year to year.  But really, we don't know until the campaign's run.

A few things in terms of how to improve your performance in the selection process.  I think working as a PHO in regional Queensland will help you with the interview, help with your regional score, help you with your experience in medical terms, because PHO work counts higher than SHO work, so that's certainly helpful if you have that opportunity. For those who aren't, applying this year, try and get exposure to the things that you see Basic physician trainees do. Overall, when you're answering the questions in the interview, just make sure you're focus is on doing things safely, but targeted to that patient, which is pretty much how you should be doing care throughout all the BPT, and make sure you read the question, and follow the instructions.  Occasionally you see a question clearly saying use the language you would use with the patient, and then people start talking jargon, follow what the instructions are.  There's some fairly simple tips, particularly for the interview, and the selection process as a whole.

So once you've selected the training programs, it basically consist of the first year, generally the first year in one training facility, from then on, placements are a minimum of six months duration, and it varies a bit depending on which rotation, and I think it's a reasonable rule of thumb if you're choosing a rotation with a fly away, just expect to be doing that fly away rotation. Not everyone does, but if you expect to do it and you know it's there, then that'll probably help you a bit with your expectation management. In the event that you are unsuccessful in the exam, or defer the exam, there's another year available.  When you're trying to preference your training program so the training lines, I think a few things to consider.
Where do you want to work as a BPT 1? Where do you want to sit your exam? Where do you want to do your level one or two time for the hospitals that have level ones and twos for the rotation level ones and twos? Do you want experience at multiple level threes? That's only available on Northside and Southside.  Would you want to stay at the one Level 3 which is Coastal, Townsville, and elsewhere? And think about, of these, which are the most appropriate because what will happen is on Northside, Southside and Coastal you get a list of preferences, which account for all these different permutations of training programs you'll be asked to preference those, and again in merit order we offer those training programs.

Now, if you're coming from Interstate, or if you've already started BPT, it's a different process. The most important thing is to decide which rotation you want to apply to.
You still have too interview and go through the selection process, but we do consider your previous training and work out whether we can meet the needs. So, make sure that you speak to the network rotation coordinator, the person who's speaking here tonight, about that opportunity.

In the past, we've had lots of questions about RPL, so to get RPL you need to be in an equivalent program to the College of Physicians Training program. You can get a maximum of 12 months and it has to be done within five years.  The tricky thing with this is you can only apply for this once you're into training, so we give three-year training programs to everyone and then RPL gets assessed by the college and it's assessed on an individual case by case basis and just in case anyone's thinking it, there's no exemption from sitting the exams.
So overall, I'd say the key thing is just make sure you review the network selection criteria and review the network material.  Also useful to read through the college material on what the training programs are like so you know what you’re signing up for, not only for the interview process, but also just to set yourself up and start planning what your three years will look like. Because as I've been saying to all the BPT1’s who are now, I think a 12th of the way through BPT or something. It goes by pretty quickly. And make sure you've got that how to apply document open when you're applying and if you're in trouble Google ‘how to apply for basic physician training in Queensland’. I pretty much do the same thing even though I work for the network, and I can always find the website fairly quickly that way it turns up on top.
All right, so if there's more questions, we'll address those later on in the Q&A session.  But we'll move on to our first rotation and network rotation coordinator.
So we've got Dr Mel Dietz from Far North, working at Cairns Hospital to talk about training in the Far North training network.

So, my name is Mel, I'm an acute and general physician in Cairns Hospital and the acting network rotation coordinator in Cairns.  I appreciate most people have probably come here today with a certain rotation in mind and potentially not many physically here tonight are thinking about Cairns, but I just encourage you to keep an open mind about the opportunities that you can have in regional Queensland. So not just Far North but also in Townsville. We offer a really different training experience that you might not have elsewhere.  There is a reason why people come back to Cairns.  So, Cairns itself - if you haven't been - we are a very laid-back regional city, very picturesque between the mountains and the Great Barrier Reef, we have a really diverse population. We have a lot of high number of First Nations populations, and we also have a lot of migrants that have come from around the world, giving us really great exposure to different cultures and food.  We are far away from Brisbane, but that doesn't mean that we are not well connected. There's 14 flights a day to Brisbane, 6 to Melbourne and 7 to Sydney.

We also have an International Airport, which is very well connected to the rest of the world thanks to Singapore Airlines and many of our registrars on their relief terms enjoy having a week away in Bali, New Zealand, Japan and our schedules are actually they're so good Singapore Airlines leave on a Friday at 6:00 PM you can go to Singapore for the weekend and come back.

So just because we're far away doesn't mean we're small.  We're a tertiary hospital with over 500 beds.  We're currently undergoing further expansion, including two new medical wards - which are underway at the moment.  So, our hospital extends from the bottom right all the way up to the middle, which is a yellow building which is our main building, and then across the bridge to the cancer centre and then just behind that is where this further development with JCU and the hospital.  We are fortunate enough to be right by the beach. Most of our wards and offices have water views.  It's only a 10-minute walk to the city via the Esplanade, so there's lots of after work activities and if you are a cyclist, there's great access to cycle pathways and we have secure bike storage and changing facilities.

So, we are the referral centre for north of Tully and include almost the entire of Cape York.  So, we get a very diverse cohort of patients which range from regional farmers to international tourists and our First Nations population who live in the communities up in the Cape.  Because of this, we have access to all medical subspecialty, so that includes neurology, immunology, and rheumatology.  Because of that, we're able to offer two subspecialty terms per year, which are three months each, in order to give you that broad exposure you need for the exams and most of our consultants are 100% public so it means that they are there full time every day to support your teaching and research.

The hospital culture, I think is our biggest draw card in Cairns.  We are a tertiary hospital but have a small hospital feel and that's not just within the medical department, it's within nursing, allied health, and the support staff.
We have a very strong RMO society where very regular activities which are listed up there.  It's not just doctors, junior doctors, that go consultants go, Allied health, etc, which makes for a really nice environment.  We strongly discourage the hierarchy in Cairns, which means that our consultants and registrars are really approachable. If there's unacceptable behaviour, it's trodden out really quickly.  Finishing at 406 is challenging, we all know that - so in Cairns, most of our rotations are rostered 8 till 5, with 1/2 day once a week. So, it means that you actually get that half day and it’s not expected that you have any overtime, but if you do, that's paid.

The second biggest drawcard would be our unique medicine because of our large geographical area, including very remote areas. We unfortunately get quite a lot of late presentations with complex pathology. For this reason, our general medicine team is really strong.  We've got 10 acute general medicine teams with 18 physicians that mostly work full time. We would routinely see things like rheumatoid heart disease, early onset vascular and cardiovascular and renal disease, as well as autoimmune conditions like SLE which are more prevalent in our First Nations population and this is along with the expected tropical diseases like melioidosis and suspected tuberculosis, which we get from the Torres Strait and the PNG.  These complex Gen. Med patients are the people that you need to see before your clinical exams and at your exam, that's where you can demonstrate where you've been able to achieve your cultural competence, your management plans, which are pragmatic and individualised and that's something that you will take with you for the rest of your career.

So other opportunities, I know there'll be lots to talk about the teaching opportunities. We have subspecialty teaching weekly, which is open to everybody, our BPT teaching once a week, which is aimed at ward and admission-based themes we also have weekly clinical reasoning and SIMS sessions for our BPT's, which are run by SIM trained physicians.  In terms of our written exam preparation in the months leading up to the written, we have three times a week, consultant led lectures and we also hold two mock exams in Cairns and that's in addition to what the network provides, the clinical exam is very highly structured in Cairns, all trainees are split into groups, rostered to three short case sessions with consultants per week with a long case and we also hold 4 mock exams for which our trainees get at least two, depending on how many trainees we have each year.  Research is very strong in Cairns. We've got lots of physicians who really like research and we’re willing to work with anybody who is new to research. A lot of our trainees get involved, which is great, and we also don't have any flyway terms, but we do have about half of our trainees do three months at either Innisfail or Atherton, which is an hour away from where we are.

I won't dwell too much more about Cairns, but don't feel like in Cairns you're going to be moving away from the city and you're going to lack culture.
We have a national basketball team, so you have access to sport.  We also get the cricket coming up.  We've got lots of the cultural festivals, so don't feel like you're going to miss out on anything moving up to Cairns.  So, my high pass rates got in there. So why Cairns?  So, we have a group of really young and passionate physicians who are willing to teach you and we also have a highly structured and supportive training program.  But I think the reason that people come and stay in Cairns because of the lifestyle, the work life balance that we can provide.
My comment was going to be don't be swayed by the pass rates because a lot of people are going to pass no matter what rotation they go to it’s just about the rotation, providing the type of support that you require and in Cairns, we feel like we provide a nice nurturing environment to support you and give the tools that you need to pass the exam. So, you can pass in any network, so keep an open mind with what network you think can provide you the opportunity to thrive in both your personal and professional life. Training is important, but as Paul said, it's really short and so is your life. So make sure that you don't just make the next three years about your training not to be depressing, but you know it's a stressful period of your life and I think in Cairns we do a really good job of trying to balance you, being able to have a time away from work while preparing for your exams and you don't need to be in Southeast Queensland to get onto competitive training programs.
Our clinical directors are on the same panels as everybody else and in a small hospital, they know you and they're going to advocate for you.
So in summary, I think Cairns attracts trainees who are looking for something different in their training, and if any of that appeals to you, please come and have a chat with me or send me an e-mail if you're online.  Thanks.

I'll hand over to Brian.

Thank you, so my name is Brian Wood, second of the three wise monkeys, more to follow. Life gets even shorter at my age. I'm here, I'm going to talk about a couple of things in two different sections of the talk.  So, I'm another one of the physician medical directors and I'm going to talk about flexible work arrangements.  Those of you in the room willing to share how many of you currently work less than full time?
There we go, so it can happen.  Look both the network and the college support flexible work arrangements, as do all of our constituent hospitals and there are lots of ways that that can happen.  So, part time positions so less than one FTE and more than .2 FTE, job share arrangements. So that are people that literally you have two of you and you do either half the week each or one week on and one week off, or extended leave three months off to go and triple jump in the Olympics, that's a real case of something that's happened to be able to do that so.  We are supportive of that wherever we can be.  We collect preferences for part time working as part of the annual preference survey after selection is finalised. So, by definition if you say I want to work part time, that's not part of the selection process.  It wouldn't be anyway, but it's even clearer because it's after selection, is finalised and then we will try and wherever possible match candidates to available part time positions based on ranking requests for special consideration and our network rotation coordinators, who again you're hearing from this evening will balance that as to where that is possible.  Sometimes that is very straight forward, sometimes it can be more complicated and then if we can't find that initial match, the message is work with us to find a solution such as job sharing organised between trainees directly with approval of the network rotation coordinator approval or via ourselves as network directors and with our team that does this and we've got a trainee forum in teams created to support trainees to help facilitate swaps, sourcing a job share partner where appropriate and things like that and the message is not everybody will want to do this. If you do, please talk to us, and ask and we will endeavour to find a way to make it work and there are lots of reasons as to why you may want to think about that.  Things to think about.  How long do you want to work part time or job share?
Where are you prepared to work?  Because sometimes what's most important to you is it, I want to work part time, but I'd be willing to travel and things like that.
What work pattern best suits you? And sometimes a lot of this is about parental challenges.  It isn't always, but sometimes that week on week off is a lot easier.
Sometimes that's very different, difficult from a childcare perspective.
If you're going to job share, how will leave be managed and that needs agreement between yourselves and the unit that you're working on. I think we are all here to look after patients and if you are going to job share as an example, how are we going to make sure that safe handover happens because if I work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Spencer works Thursday, Friday.
It's going to be common sense. We need to plug in a handover either on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning to just make sure that patients are safe.
Little bit of thought about difficulties of your job sharing and your partner resigns or goes off on different leave. How are you going to manage that?  And there is, I think as time goes on, there is more and more competency-based training.
But at the moment there are still time based aspects of training and so thinking about when are you eligible for the exam.  Because things are pro rata.  So, if you're working 0.5 that three years becomes six years, and eligibility would become at the end of two years equivalent. And there are other things that we can look at including deferral of commencement up to six months instead of commencing training from January you can request a delay until June, assuming there are a level of appropriate reasons and on occasions we can look at that. The wonderful NRCs are selling their wares as to why all of their rotations are the best - and basically, we're all employed by the QLD taxpayer at the end of the day and so there are potential to be able to move between our different rotations.  That's not a free for all.  We need to plan that and discuss that, but they are all nice to each other.  Most of the time - so our NRCS will speak to each other and manage that appropriately.

Including aspects of interruptions for training for multiple reasons.  Something else that's covered on the website is our mid-year entry into training and in some cases and it is very clearly written down what those cases are. You can apply to join the network and commence training early from mid-year August in the year that you apply to the network.  So, this may be an overseas graduate that recently gained general registration. Somebody from Interstate who missed the previous network application process - they may have been returning from parental leave, or there may be other reasons.  Somebody moving from another specialty and so it's normally somebody that wouldn't fit in usual criteria. As I say, we have an entire document to look at that regarding the eligibility, you still need to successfully pass our selection process to get into that mid-year entry into training, and that's the key eligibility criteria, holding general registration, eligible for registration with RACP as a basic physician trainee by the end of August.  So we have to set some lines in the sand in terms of times of appointment,  PGY 3 or above, a current employment contract in a Queensland Network hospital, commencing by August, pass the network selection process, the interviews are held in early August, and then you will essentially commence training three weeks after your interview and not having declined a network position after receiving hospital allocations or exiting the network and there are very clear reasons as to why we do that. In order to do that, you submit your application in June through the RMO and registrar campaign and indicate that you want to be considered for mid-year entry and to commence training in August 2025. And this is another one of those cases of please e-mail and then pick up the phone to the relevant NRC and the DPE of the hospital that you're in because this is a slightly unusual option, and it's something that we want to make sure is the right thing for you.

Lots of people want to move on their career. That's great, my counsel is your career is a long way ahead of you in the future and sometimes don't rush.  But that's something we can talk about informally at the end and still, as I say, successfully pass the network selection process including the interview, most of which you will do. So just that very specific thing. So, the two things I want to really just focus on their yes, part time training, we will support that where appropriate and it is the right thing for you and that mid-year entry, we will always get asked questions about there is plenty on that document.  Go back to the website, but we can talk more about it as we go on and that's all I'm going to say on my first trip up here and see where we go, and we've been to the far north.  We're now moving to the frozen South, Kathryn.

Good evening. My name is Katheryn Berkman.
I'm the Southside network rotation coordinator and I'm also an endocrinologist at Logan Hospital and it's fantastic to see so many people here this evening interested in physician training, and I wish you all the best wherever it is that you end up.  and so, the first thing about the Southside network is we are a big network, we have 9 hospitals, there are three tertiary settings. There's PA Hospital, Greenslopes hospital, which is a private hospital and Mater hospital, to the not-for-profit hospital we have 4 level twos, Logan, Toowoomba, QEII and Ipswich and then we've got two level ones which is Hervey Bay and Bundaberg, so that's the only beachside that I can offer you.
It's always tough to come after Cairns with all their beautiful pictures.  So, on the Southside network, you'll usually train at two to three hospitals, and you'll spend 12 to 18 months of your time in a tertiary setting, and the rest of your time in a non-tertiary and that's so that you meet your time-based requirements.

We are geographically vast, but we also do have unique opportunities in that you can train in private and as far as I know with the only network in Queensland where you have the opportunity to train in a private hospital, which is something I do really wish I'd done when I was that baby doctor because most people will end up not as a full time public employee and it's really invaluable to have that early experience on how the private sector works and as opposed to also plant some seeds about places you might want to work in the future.  So if you do preference the Southside, and then you’re selected onto our network, you'll have an opportunity to preference from training lines and so that way you'll have your full three years upfront you'll know where you're going to be and because we are have so many hospitals, I've got my training lines down to about 60, which means that you have lots and lots of flexibility for what it is that you need for your training.

So for some people, being in the greater Brisbane metro area is really important and so there are training lines that will have, say, Ipswich, Logan, PAH.
Some people want more time in tertiary, so we often pair 18 months of tertiary with a six month flyway like Hervey Bay or Bundaberg and you know, some people will want to work in private. Some people want to go, go to the beach for six months.
So all of those options are there, but they are, although there are 60, they are curated to be training settings that work well together and that complement each other so that you have breadth of experience.
So I won’t talk too much on exam preparation because all of the sites in Queensland have a benchmark on what we will offer for exam prep, but what we tend to do on the Southside is that you'll have your 12 months of tertiary when you're prepping for your exam and then if you're in your 4th year, if you're a deferred sitter or a resitter, then we have some level 2 sites like Logan and QEII and Ipswich who offer a comprehensive exam prep programme as well.  You can expect didactic lectures.
You'll have bedside clinical teaching, private and public long cases. All trainees have access to, two to three clinical exams. So, you generally have a couple in your hospital, but you'll also have a clinical exam and another hospital as well to give you that experience of going to a foreign hospital.  We try, well, we share all of our resources across the network. So, you know if there is a particular lecture that's only available at, say, the PAH, then that is available for you online and in the lead up to the written exam, the PA Hospital do weekly MCQ quizzes which you can access from any site and that helps us tailor our didactic teaching.  So, if there's a certain topic that's been more nuanced then, we can put on more teaching around that.  And I guess looking back at my training, one of the things that I thought was quite special is this opportunity to learn from some very experienced consultants, you know, certain people who have written worldwide guidelines or have chaired or have been National Committee presidents which I think is very special. Wherever you go, you will have research opportunities, but I thought I'd highlight the TRI, which is a huge research facility at the back of the PAH and also the Mater Research Institute, which partners with UQ and coming off the back of the talk on flexible training, we are very supportive of flexible training. I can proudly say that every trainee that's approached us and wanted a flexible arrangement, we've been able to provide that. We tend to have between ten to twelve trainees at any time in flexible arrangements and at the moment we've got trainees at Logan, Ipswich, QEII and Greenslopes, but we do plan to expand that across every site within our network.
I'm at the end of my slides, so I'm going to hand over to Jenna, who's sort of a former and sort of a current Southside trainee who's going to describe her experience on the Southside.

Yes. Hi everybody, I remember coming to this talk myself four years ago. So, it feels very odd to be here actually giving it this time. So, my training experience as Kathryn has alluded to is a little bit different from your normal pathway.  So, I finished in 2019 and I've been across multiple different sites.  I did my internship in Townsville.  I had a great year and then in 2021 I had to move back to Brisbane for family reasons, so I had some time at The Prince Charles Hospital and then I made the decision to jump across the river and commence my basic physician training at the Southside network, where I did my first year as a registrar, baby registrar at Toowoomba Hospital, dove in the water feet first and was at PAH for the subsequent two years. I sat my exams in 2024 and passed thanks to my colleagues and the support we got and then my training took a little bit of a turn because I ended up having my child at the end of or middle 2024. I went on maternity leave and were supported to have eight months off for maternity leave and I've returned to the PAH as a part time chief medical registrar there this year and I will be recommencing my full-time basic training at the end of the last six months this year and then hopefully on to advanced training.  So, my experience on the Southside has really been fantastic.

I've had a very varied experience and I've had a lot of a lot of good times and a lot of support to get through this training program, which can be difficult at times. So, I've been at both Toowoomba and PA hospital. Everywhere is busy but I found that the workload is manageable with your colleagues, and I found that both sites is full of very supportive consultants who you can call for advice, lean on for support and provide a good opportunity for mentors and supervisors.   There's a very interesting case load, especially at, you know, those smaller regional hospitals as you often get very unwell, very complex, medically diverse patients that you wouldn't expect and as the registrar there, you're responsible for managing those patients.  So, there's a lot of autonomy and a lot of growth that you can do as a registrar there and across both sites, there's lots of opportunities for learning, teaching, and research.  I met my study group in Toowoomba, and we carried through all the way through BPT 2 and BPT 3.  We all got ourselves through and we all passed our exams.  So, you have the opportunity to develop lifelong friends and colleagues, and that was something I really appreciated through my time.  Another thing I'd just say at PAH especially, we have a balanced after-hours roster with a new ACU unit which I found has made doing relieving and nights such a different experience as you feel like part of a team now with dedicated training and it feels like a little family. I haven't had any access difficulty with access to leave, whether that be recreational leave, study leave, everyone's very supportive and aware that you need the time off and you need to be able to prepare for this training program property.  We've already kind of been through this, but the exam preparation from my just anecdotal experience was excellent.  We had a very extensive written exam preparation material.  Weekly MCQ's, regular practice exams and tutorials from the specialists outside the College lecture series.  As someone who's now organising the clinical exam preparation at my hospital, I can say they put extensive effort into organising a very structured clinical exam prep programme and that's not just that PAH that goes across the other Southside network sites with lots of public long cases, private long cases, short case teaching, mock exams that we share across the Southside network. So, you don't only have your exam in your base hospital and a lot of prioritisation and support given to help get exam sitters the leave that they need to try and get them through these exams. And as a hopeful future Cardiologist I outlined that from the beginning of my training, and I have been really well supported to get sub specialty terms that will support that career pathway. I've done Cardiology twice across two different centres.  I've done nephrology, neurology, I did some ICU time, I've done relieving in geriatrics and haematology, and I've done my Gen. Med time, so I think again, speaking from experience, they do put a lot of effort into trying to get you the subspecialty terms that you want and that that will help progress your career.  There are plenty more options that I didn't look into as a potential Cardiologist they were too smart for me. So, and as I said, especially across lots of sites, including the PAH, they're very sick, very complex, medically comorbid patients and it really pushes you to grow as a doctor and as a registrar.  And at the PAH as well we are very blessed to have access to across all sites, leading experts in multiple sub specialties and very specialised medicine if that's something that you're interested in. I was also one of those people who did have flexible training, so just wanted to highlight that my journey was different being supported whilst pregnant and studying. I've had no difficulties finding access to flexible return to work and I've also had the unique opportunity of doing the chief medical registrar role post my exams, which has opened up a whole different set of skills that we don't normally use as doctors. So, and I just wanted to outline that lots of my colleagues have had extensive access to research opportunities, be it audits, case reports, clinical trials in their departments, writing or helping to contribute to chapters in textbooks, etc. The opportunities are there if you are keen and pursue these when they're offered to you so. Thank you.
Brilliant thank you Jenna, how you did your exam whilst pregnant I will never know, we give you a big round of applause for that.  I think we're doing questions at the end, so please feel free to ask me any questions at the end. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathryn, and Jenna. My name is Spencer Toombes. I'm the third of the medical directors for the network, whether we’re monkey’s or triumvirates, it depends a little bit on which way the wind's blowing, but I am also a general physician and the Director of physician education at Toowoomba Hospital, so very happy to answer questions about that later on.  I'm the little bookmark before we welcome Sid from the Gold Coast to come and talk about Coastal rotation, and I get to talk about the educational resources that you get from the network.  Becoming a physician is in many ways a task that you feel like you're doing on your own. But when you get to the end of it, you look back and realise all the people that helped you along the way. Very much an apprenticeship - learning how to be a medical registrar. The college has a whole pile of fancy competencies that we put on a pinwheel in rainbow colours.  But you've got to be these things. You've got to do things which are entrust able professional activities, which now our Interns are learning to do and so it's sort of an extension of that and then there's the no component, which is the knowledge guides. The knowledge guides are obviously linked very much to a extremely challenging but very passable written exam and then you demonstrate all of those skills in a clinical exam before transitioning to advanced training. In addition to all of the local resources that you are learning about tonight, the network ensures that you get equitable access to education and if you're in a small hospital and you don't have a department of clinical genetics, we make sure that the genetics lectures get online and are available to you, for example.  We set a protected standard for exam preparation, which network most of the hospitals outdo themselves to meet and exceed those standards. We work with the chief medical registrars across the network to ensure that the educational initiatives that we're bringing through support trainees statewide and are fit for purpose for different stages of training and we share the resources across the state.  For first year network trainees, we run an education series and an annual welcome event, we talk to you about planning your training, how to maximize your relationship with supervisors, how to do the workplace based assessments, how to plan your exam study, and how to step up into the roles of team leadership and the skills of time manage.
As well, there are specific written exam resources such as MCQ tutorials. We run a very well received clinical exam preparation program which is a focused weekend plus a bunch of after-hours lectures. We share the Mater teaching resources across the network.  We run a performance psychology session for exam sitters. You also get access to a thing that is sort of set up for the advanced trainees in general medicine, which is QIMEP and facilitated access to other training programs such as A-Z Stroke management for basic physician trainees, and having said all those things, I'm going to welcome Sid to talk about and indeed Nicole to talk about the Coastal network.

Ok, thank you everyone for coming, I'm Sid, I am the NRC for the Coastal network.
I've been trying to get my CMR to come along with me, so two years ago CMR's excuse was they were buying a house on that same night, so they didn't come last year, the CMR said oh, he's having a baby on the same night so they can’t come and today my CMR said, oh, look, he's already bought a house, had a baby and now picking up the grandparents to come and you know, see the baby and live with them, so I'm lucking out and who knows in future they'll probably be telling me they're moving into a retirement village or something like that.

So, my CMR is advancing in their career which is good, but I'm lucky because I have with me Nicole, who's one of our advanced trainees, who's been through the Coastal network for her training and I think it's really, really useful for you to hear directly from the trainee through their experience - like we have heard from the Southside. So, I'll pass it on to Nicole and I might have a minute or two at the end to fill.

Hi everyone, yeah, I'm Nicole I'm currently in Haematology advanced trainee at Gold Coast and I did all of my BPT training at Coastal and chose to stay at Gold Coast because I do really love it.  So just a little bit about our hospital site. So our tertiary centre is the Gold Coast University Hospital and you'll generally do two out of your three years there, and then at level 2, hospitals are Robina Hospital, which is part of Gold Coast Health as well and then you've got Logan as well as Redland and exciting thing about these sites is kind of all three centres are all centres now that host the clinical exam for the real exam day.  So, it's really exciting because you can be, you know, in that mindset whilst you're there in the hospital with everyone around you, consultants looking for cases.  Your CMRs looking for cases for the exam and you might think oh, why would Redlands be a great place like, you know, such a little hospital. But actually, I sat the scariest mock exam there last year when I was sitting my exam, which scared me into making sure I was ready and past first go, so they really did prepare me and marked my long case. They gave me good marks, so that was good.  I failed my short case though.

So why Coastal - so I just thought I'd talk about more of the hospital side of things. So generally, known for its friendly culture. So, the consultants are very approachable, the senior staff.  You can often have a laugh, for example, so this is my hematology team. When I was a BPT and every day during Christmas, we try to dress up in crazy outfits every day and we were walking through ICU and everyone was looking at us like, who are these, which specialty is this team from? So that was exciting and that was the consultant's idea and yet when you're in that friendly culture it just makes working all that more enjoyable in such a stressful time. And another example of the friendly culture is our medical decision unit, which is that group photo up there, and that's just a group of, yeah, the consultants, the nursing staff, the residents and the registrars and we're all just enjoying our time together which I think highlights, yeah, what a great place it is to work. Secondly, in terms of our exam support, it's it was quite excellent as someone who sat the exams last year, I think it sounds like each network does very similar like with you know, 3 mock exams, 2 mock exams internal for the clinical and probably 1 outside and then as well as that, you know, support with weekly long case sessions etc.  I think what I found at Gold Coast University Hospital is that there was really that culture of our, you know consultants and advance trainees really wanting to set a time that extra like informal sessions as well.  So, I did quite a lot of extra long cases outside of the formal teaching, which was useful, and in terms of the written exam as well. They were twice a week tutorials and leading up to the exam in addition to everything that the network provides, which was also very useful as well.

Another benefit is Gold Coast University Hospital is tertiary hospital with all the specialties including cardiothoracic and neurosurgery, and you might think, why does this matter, if I'm a Med Reg? Well, when you do consults, it does make for quite an interesting consult load. For example, when I was an infectious diseases Reg as a surgical consult Reg, I would often have to consult on neurosurgical patients. cardiothoracic if you're someone who's interested in cardiology, I think this is also quite useful as well, and we also have obstetrics as well.  So, if you're interested in that kind of obstetric medicine type flavour, that's also quite useful to get exposure of those different kinds of patient populations.  And finally, in terms of why us, the AT application process as well, I felt I was very well supported. So, here's a photo with me at the blood conference when I was a BPT 2.  So not only did I secure time for professional development leave to attend the conference Interstate, I was also supported by the consultants to put in my research and present the poster there and in terms of the AT application process as well like over 90% of our applicants last year got their first preference and we also then have like good outcomes in terms of you know those competitive specialties such as cardiology, infectious diseases and endocrine as well.

So life's not all about work, and that's obviously a really important thing to think about whilst you're doing your training, because it is often, you know, a really also a really fun part of your life as well and you've got to think about all the other things.
So when I asked around the trainees currently at around at Gold Coast in the last few days, I was like, why do you like Gold Coast?  They're like the main answer I got was lifestyle, and yeah, we obviously have like quite amazing beaches and good weather and it's just nice, you know, to unwind after work, towards beach as well and then if you're doing a rotation up in Logan or Redlands, you're not that far away and that's another benefit to you all of these places are commutable from each other, so you'd never actually need to move during your BPT training, which I think is a huge drawcard.

Other aspects of outside life.  So I actually took four years to do BPT, but it was only because I deferred my exam so I could play competitive ultimate Frisbee.
So that's me up there playing Frisbee and the yeah department were supportive with letting me have the extra time off to secure supporting me for national competitions, and I didn't feel that pressure to have to sit my exams like in the first year that I was eligible as well which was really great.  And lastly, we do have a lot of like social and networking events.  So we had a couple of Med Reg specific dinners held at the Royal Pines Hotel and I didn't have a photo of that, but you know otherwise like the oncology team here, they had a dinner and the other photos from our doctors in training ball so Gold Coast is well known for being quite social and we do have great events and it's just great to like get to know your consultants and senior registrars outside of work and know that they're not just doctors, they've got a life outside of work and it's also a good networking opportunity as well.

And then this is just an example of the rotations I did so I actually did my first year as SHO, did a critical response unit which was Ward Call which is like that integrated unit that the PAH now have as well, which was quite exciting and I think trained me up to be confident enough to be a Med Reg dealing with acute situations, I got basically half you know, sub specialty terms every year and my final year, lucky enough to get 3 sub specialty terms, I also got to do an ICU rotation again being a tertiary hospital ICU with neurosurgery and cardiothoracic was quite interesting, and yeah, I think that's all I had to say.

So, thanks Nicole, look, I think a couple of things that you might have not mentioned was that we also like to recognise our trainees because, you work hard, you play hard, you should be recognised. So, Nicole actually received our Professor, Peter Davoren, Medal for being the most successful Coastal network trainee for last year, so she I did try to get her to wear it here today, but she thought she was a bit embarrassed by it, but she'll show it to you guys when we're having some food and drinks.  But I think pretty much I've covered everything; I’ll just go through my notes and see if there's anything else that I was supposed to cover.  I think I covered that, not allowed to talk about that.  Did I cover?  Is there anything else that we need to cover? I think no. I think we've gone through those.  Brian is there anything else in the network? Thank you everyone. Thanks, we've done your appraisal, Sid, haven't we, will we need to worry about that until next year?

Look, there are we've mentioned a couple of times today, the college and the network are different things.  There is a lot of blurring. I have the privilege of about to be President of the Adult Medicine division of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and some of the things I'm about to describe are cross between the college and the network, Tracey, and Hannah here from the college today will also speak about anything college specific afterwards.  We and Paul started with an acknowledgement of country. Part of what our RACP wants to do and we absolutely echo that within the network are initiatives to try and increase the number of First Nations trainees, this obviously 100% applies for Maori trainees in New Zealand, but from a Queensland perspective Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainees, and there are a variety of initiatives for First Nations trainees via RACP, this includes fee reimbursement initiatives and Indigenous leadership funds, strengthening clinical and cultural leadership capability, and conference attendance. One-on-one online coaching sessions.  A complementary physician's briefcase and any of you who hasn't seen one of the registrar's doing the exam, wandering around with the briefcase, with all of the things in. It actually costs a bit of money, so it's very good and also some indigenous scholarships and prizes.  I've previously been a judge on the Jameson RACP Award for research involving First Nations people's and this is eligible for any trainees who identify as an Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander, Maori and or Pacific peoples were not directly employed by district health boards in Ottawa and can cover the cost of annual training examinations and there are processes to do that.

So, it may or may not apply to anybody in this room or online, but please be aware of it because it's there to assist.  The Indigenous Leadership Fund providing funding to strengthen clinical and cultural leadership capability, funding by application with clear rules and regulations as to how that can happen. Sorry, separately to that, there are indigenous representation across almost all college committees and indeed separately to the First Nations aspects, getting involved in RACP as a trainee can have a lot of benefits and learning and reward in terms of that anywhere as well. And some of this is across other colleges via AIDA, which is a group that works across all of the medical colleges with regards to this and workshops to be able to do that.  If there are any First Nations trainees online and want to speak to us and get direct advice, we're very happy to try and assist with that and there is more information via deadly doctors at racp.edu.au to look at all of that and there's a QR code to scan there to look at that.

So, this is really important, it's something that we very much passionately believe in and also is part of our recruitment and selection allocation process in terms of how we look at preferencing and allocations across there.  So please consider applying to be a physician if you are a First Nations person, so really important.  Thank you for that.  We will now move on to Ryan, who's the chief Med Reg from Townsville University Hospital. Craig Costello, who's our NRC at Townsville, was unavailable to be able to come this evening and I’m the Director who nips up to Townsville, so I'm very happy to link in with any support with that, and Ryan over to you. Thank you.

Thanks guys, so I have the pleasure of talking about Townsville this evening.
Unfortunately, I have to go after Mel, who did a very good explanation and presentation on Cairns. I think if you guys do choose to come to North Queensland that coming to Townsville or Cairns both excellent places to train, but I'll try and sway you about coming to Townsville. Like I said, I'm the chief Med Reg in Townsville and put this next slide in just explain a little bit about me and trying to tell and show you that not everyone that's trains in Townsville is from JC or from Townsville so I'm actually UQ graduate, I'm from Brisbane. I spent my first two years at the Royal Brisbane, so I've been in your guy’s shoes probably if you're from Brisbane or from royal after I moved to Mount Isa for two years, which is a bit of a sideways. Whilst bit of a unusual step, I spent two years there as a PHO both in ED and as a medical PHO which I loved and kind of found a love for rural and remote medicine.  After that I moved to Townsville, and I completed my basic training there.  So, I spent three years as a basic trainee and now I've moved on to advanced training in Gen Med and I’m currently the CMR.  So, you've heard where Cairns is, Townsville is not far from it about 400 kilometres south of Cairns but we're still very, very far away from Brisbane, so we're about 1300 kilometres away from Brisbane, but we're not that isolated like most places. Now days we have 12 direct flights from Brisbane daily and seven direct flights to Cairns and flights across all of Australia as well.
We are large and growing population of about 200,000 now and we have a pretty diverse population with large service to a rural population as well and surrounding area and importantly we have a large demographic of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders like Cairns.

So why Townsville? Like I said, we are a large town, but we're also a large hospital and we actually are the only regional tertiary hospital in the in the country.
As a tertiary hospital, we basically take referrals for anywhere from north of Rockhampton all the way up to the Cape and West to the north Queensland. Sorry NT border out to Mount Isa.  We're also teaching hospital and associated with the James Cook University Hospital and like I said, we're actually quite a large hospital. We're about 785 beds and we're currently undergoing expansion like many centres around Queensland. I think from memory we're somewhere around the size of
PAH, which might surprise you. We also are developing a transplant service with
the North Queensland Kidney transplant service to start in a few months’ time.
So we're about 800 doctors, 2500 nurses, and about 550 allied staff and being a tertiary referrals hospital we also have extensive services, including a tertiary level ICU, CCU, including a Cath lab, EP service and cardiothoracic service, as well as the early ECR service I think north of Brisbane in Australia.

Unlike Royal Brisbane, we're also fully electronic and IMR integrated, and I think we're the first hospital in Queensland to be, so we’ve had that for a long time now and after being at the Royal, I'll tell you it's great being electronic makes your life a lot easier. This is just a generic slide saying that to show you that we have basically everything in the hospital I might not go through that. And we offer pretty much rotations in all different specialities you can think of as a basic physician trainee, AAU is just our version of like a MAPU like acute medicine that we have general medicine of notes, we also have a geriatrics service, we have both acute geriatrics and subacute and rehab as well, which you can rotate through.

So, what's different about the northern network?  Like I said, we are the largest level 6 regional tertiary centre in Australia, this gives us, this means we're a Level 3 hospital in terms of the RACP accreditation for training. We're also all in one network, a single training centre, so you can you potentially spend your whole three years in Townville and not have to move hospital. That said, we do have a secondment site which is Mount Isa, which I'd highly recommend going to if you have the opportunity.  In terms of the financial bonus as well, if you have two rotations there which can be non-consecutive, so you could do one in one year and the second one in another year, you do get the rural incentive bonus, which is an extra - last time I checked - 18 and a half thousand in your pocket, which is a good incentive, and whilst you are there you get accommodation, car provided plus transport costs to get out there as well.  Other than the financial incentive, it's just a great exposure to rural remote medicine and an understanding of health issues faced by Australia's First Nations communities and also kind of allows you to practice medicine where you don't have everything on hand, where you might not have access to sub specialty consultants  to come and see your patient, you have to you have to practice true general medicine, which is really exciting.

The other thing we offer is I think like most hospitals we have, you're guaranteed to get 2 specialty rotations per year as a network trainee for all your three years and if you do choose to come here and decide to stay on as a AT, we have positions available and essentially all the subspecialties apart from the very niche areas of Clin. Pharm, Clin. Genetics and Immunology.  So I wanted to talk about our exam success but that we're not allowed to do that anymore, but what I will allude to is that what I can talk about is that we do have a record of retaining our basic physician trainees to AT so over the years I've been there, people senior to me, I've seen proceed through BPT and stay on as ATs and a lot of our consultants have also - like a lot of the previous speakers - have talked about their young cohorts that have also been locally trained and moved from Basic Physician Trainees, to ATs, to consultants, within Townsville Hospital.  So people stay for a reason is what I'm trying to say and like, I think Mel or someone else said, don't think that coming to North Queensland or different site outside of Southeast Queensland will hurt your like acceptance into a competitive specialty, we have consistent acceptance and like someone else said the same people that sit on the boards for these sub spec are from all over Queensland, not just in Southeast Queensland.

So as a BPT at Townsville University Hospital, we do have an enthusiastic and motivated physician training unit, which I’m now part of as the CMR. Like I said, we're rapidly growing, improving both in size and in terms of our registrar numbers.  I think we've got 42 basic physician trainees now. I'm not going to rehash what everyone said about our kind of structured exam preparation, but we're very similar to that.  We're in the midst of that at the moment for the DCE and we run the same kind of program that's everywhere else and I think from memory, you have something, every exam sitter has about two mocks and a couple of practice mocks as well, so we offer quite extensive kind of exam preparation. We also have a closed knit network with our consultants and advanced trainees with a strong emphasis on mentorship as well.   You have opportunities to teach at JCU, given that we are a teaching hospital and there's also the MINT program, which is just the mentoring to interns as well.  Can't talk about our exam success anymore, but I've talked about our trainees returning to as consultants.  But I think also what I'll say is that we have a very positive workplace culture as well, coming from someone that's just been through basic physician training.  I really liked it because it's very laid back atmosphere, Townsville Hospital, the consultants are very approachable, and there's also note -saying that we pay our AVACs as well, which is good.

So, some of the people involved with your training, if you choose to come - on the screen now - but the top two on the left is, Dr Craig Costello, and Dr Shenoy, who are part of our physician training unit as well as our DPE, Suji who couldn’t be here tonight, and then we have a admin officer, Rachel as well, and myself, who's the CMR.
So other than just working at the hospital, what's good about Townsville? We have free parking you don’t have to pay for parking and there's no long commutes to get to work.  Think my commutes about 5 minutes to work, and there's no traffic, it's much easier than living in Brisbane, I think.  Also saved a lot just from being in Townsville as well because everything's just cheaper in terms of cost of living. I'm sure the same with Cairns, but definitely cheaper rent and just the necessities of life just cost less in Townsville and like I've alluded to as well, we live in a very - like a coastal area - which has a very laid back lifestyle and we have close proximity to the to the beach and nature. Slightly better beach than Cairns, but we're a little bit further away from the reef than Cairns.  So that's all I have, but please feel free to contact one of us through the e-mail address or come speak to me afterwards if you have any questions about Townsville.

Thank you and just for clarification, all this talk about exam pass rates, we did instruct the NRC's that they weren't supposed to come up here and brag about how good the exam pass rates were.  The reason for that is last year they all came up here and all said they had the best pass rate in the state, which obviously was a little bit dubious.  So, what I can say is overall Queensland does very, very well and considering its origin season, the most recent written exam, we certainly beat NSW on our pass rates. That's quite important. But yeah, certainly the pass rates are quite good all across the state. So, we have one more speaker and that's Dr Tasnim Zirapury from the Northside rotation and then we'll go into our Q&A section, but Tasnim come up.

Hi everyone, my name is Tasnim I am the Northside rotation coordinator. Let me bring up the slide first, aright, so as I said I'm Tasnim Zirapury the Northside rotation coordinator.  I'm also a nephrologist working at Rockhampton Base Hospital and the acting DPE there currently.  The Northside rotation is the largest rotation in Queensland and we offer training across 7 fully accredited college hospitals.  Three of them are Level 3 hospitals - Royal Brisbane, Prince Charles, and the Sunshine Coast - and four Level 2 hospitals, there is the rural and regional hospitals, you have Redcliffe and Caboolture, which are driving distance from Brisbane, and then you have Mackay and Rockhampton that you actually need to relocate there to do your training.  So, I won't talk too much about the training lines because there's a lot of overlap, so there is a standard we are, we all across Queensland we provide upfront 3 year training lines I won't go into details there are some unique features about our training lines that I'll probably speak to as I go across the slides.

Maybe I'll just integrate those unique features in there, one of the things that I want to say in this slide is that we are the only rotation that provide you with the opportunity to train across two tertiary sites. So, for example, you could train at Royal Brisbane and Prince Charles during your three-year training period.
They both offered very different training experiences. For example, the Royal Brisbane is the largest tertiary referral centre with all the subspecialty exposures that you would expect from a large referral centre and the Prince Charles is our cardiothoracic referral centre, so you can get quite a bit of experience or exposure in lung transplant, cystic fibrosis, heart transplant.  So, you do have the opportunity to train across the two sites if you wish to.  It's hard to do justice to all the seven sites, and I always find it very difficult to choose the best selling points for my hospitals and I think my colleagues have made it a little bit easier for me by talking to all the all the wonderful things that they've got to offer across their sites and all of these points are actually quite uniform across Queensland, I must say, so I can just say ditto and pass off for that.  There will be some unique features about training on the Northside and I can point that out, but all the common features of great geographic locations are working in nature. For example, if you had Sunshine Coast, if you like adventure, there's opportunities for hiking, there's opportunities for surfing all this is pretty common - training is great across all the sites, all the big tertiary hospitals and the regional rural areas our regional rural areas you actually have an opportunity to see a very great case mix there and particularly the complex ones, the latest presentations, the training is fine, quite useful especially for the exam preparation.

You see a lot of social issues as well that are quite unique to rural, regional areas, which is good for exam exposure for the exam, and also for preparing you to be very robust physicians as well.  At our regional areas, one of the unique things that the trainees always sort of comment about is the opportunity to do procedures. So, they get a bit of more of hands on experience and they also sort of like the fact that they get to a lot more clinics, which would be sort of allocated to the advanced trainees at bigger centres.

Ok so I've got slides on individual hospitals, but I probably won't talk about them individually and I'll try to clamp them together. Royal Brisbane is where you are tonight, I'll just say very little about it.  It's the largest tertiary hospital in Queensland and it serves to patients throughout the state. So, all of Queensland, but also neighbouring countries, northern NSW, NT, so it sort of covers a very large area, large population it is known for its teaching and research, so I won't go into that. I think all of you probably know about that already, so I'm not going to harp on about that.  What I will say is about the DPE so your DPEs here would be Dr Susan Petrie and Dr Joseph Tan who's the deputy DPE and both are very, very committed to their trainees and they're committed to the well-being of the trainees as well as the learning and teaching.

So, the Prince Charles hospital, this is not very far away from here about a 10–15-minute drive. As I previously alluded to, it's a sort of a hub for cardiothoracic surgery, heart and lung transplant, cystic fibrosis are the specialities over there, but they also offer terms such as neurology, stroke, medical oncology, gastroenterology.  So, you get a wide variety of exposure over there and the DPE there, Dr Shaun Pandy is known for his compassion and he's leading a very successful training program at Prince Charles Hospital.  He's recently been joined by our Deputy DPE, I haven't met him yet sorry, his name escapes me, but it is there right at the end Dr Victor Ching, there you go, it's come back to me.  Sorry, a blank moment there.

All right, so next is the Sunshine Coast Hospital. I don't need to say where the Sunshine Coast is I think everyone knows it's a tourist destination. It's surrounded by nature, and if you're looking for adventure, that's the place to be and that's the place to train. Apart from adventure and culture and just the background over there, it is actually a very good training hospital, so you get exposure to all the sub specialties you would expect from a large tertiary centre and about the DPE, it's Dr Paul Jauncey, you've met him tonight.  So you'll probably get to know him very well by the end of this year, and he wears the other big hats - such as he chairs all the DPEs in Queensland - and also has a big role to play with the BPT's at the college level, so you'll be in very good hands training with him and he'll make a great mentor for you all.

Redcliffe Hospital the advantage of being at Redcliffe is it's only about a 30 minutes’ drive from Brisbane and you can say that you've worked at a regional centre so it's very close by.  So that's one of its big advantages, apart from the great treating program that they offer, there are multiple subspecialties, including gastroenterology, palliative care, neurology, respiratory.  I think they've got most of the subspecialties that you have at large tertiary centres from memory, but we could go into more details later, if you all are interested, they've got a very new Director of Physician Education, Dr Sarah Ward, who's already making some really great positive changes at Redcliffe.

Caboolture hospital, similarly, it's not too far away from Brisbane, only about a 45-minute drive from here, and it lies somewhere between Brisbane and Sunshine Coast.  So, you can live in Brisbane and or in Sunshine Coast or Bribie Island and still be able to commute to work from those areas. So, it's not very far away. That's a big advantage of being there and apart from that, they do actually provide a very, very competitive training program as well.  The DPEs there are Dr Simone Costa and Dr Dominic Chan who's the deputy DPE who's just joined them, and both of them are very, very enthusiastic and very focused on trainee well-being as well.

All right, so we've got the Rockhampton Hospital, that's where I work, it's a great place to work.  I can tell you that, we've got a great exposure to subspecialities there.  We've got renal, we've got cardiology, we've got geriatrics, we've got oncology, we've got haematology and of course, we've got general medicine, so and we've got great educators over there as well.  They're very keen to teach and we are one of the largest hospitals in the area and the major reference centre for all the hospitals surrounding hospitals such as Emerald, we have Gladstone, and Yeppoon and of course, the nature is not very far away. So, you've got the Great Keppel Island, very close to Rockhampton as well.  I think there's a slide that's gone missing, there you go I skipped it accidentally, so that's Mackay Base Hospital, sorry, that's one of our really great hospitals to train at as well.  So, it's the northern most hospital in our rotation.  I need to double check this because I was under the impression that it was the first hospital, regional hospital to go digital but sounds like we've got competition to that claim, so I'm not sure about that anymore.  In any case, they're fully digital, so that's a good advantage over there and they are very invested in teaching and training and exam preparation as well.  They are surrounded by nature, so they've got beaches very close by as well.  So, if you're interested in that sort of thing, lifestyle is going to be great over there. So, as I said, it's hard to do justice to all our training sites and I just wanted to give you a little bit of a snapshot, a bit of an overview of all the sites.  There are lots of terms available, almost every subspecialty is available across the seven hospitals, and we really sort of put in a lot of effort to try and make sure that you get the rotations, the core rotations and the rotations that you really want.  So, we design a training line such that you're allocated to two complementary hospitals. For example, you could have six months at Caboolture and six months at Mackay, or at Rockhampton, so that you can have complementary terms that are missing from one site you will have the opportunity to do that term at another site. For example, at Caboolture you don't get renal but at Mackay and Rockhampton you could get exposure to those terms.  We also try very hard to get you to terms that you need. If they're not available at your site for example, we had a trainee at a site who really wanted to do a haematology terms - aspiring to be a haematologist - and we did go out of our way to try and make swaps and make arrangements for them to exchange their rotations and be allocated to another site for three months, even though that's not part of a training line - to make that happen for them. So, we do, really, really try very hard to give you the exposure that you want, not only just what you need, but what you want. These are the contacts, I won't really go over them because you can find them on our website.

All right, so here are the testimonials. So, if you speak to our current trainees and the past, trainees, I'm sure you'll find scores of them who would vouch for training on the Northside rotation.  I can't put all the comments over there, but I've selected a few and I've put them in this slide.  It's a very busy slide will take you a while to go through, so I will sort of move on to our last slide and then leave this page for you to read through in your own sweet time. So, this last slide actually is a candid shot of our basic physician training who's currently doing a renal term with us I think the picture speaks for itself I wanted to put it up there as he's actually working really, really hard and I promised him - I said that this is the only reward that I can actually give him.  I use it to highlight the amount of work that a BPT actually needs to do, and I also wanted to end this night by actually saying that basic physician training is actually a privilege and it's a very noble profession and it's not an easy road so it does take a lot of breath, it takes passion, takes resilience,  and it takes determination and I think you should step into it with your eyes wide, wide open.  Don’t mean to scare you, but I think you need to know what you're doing. All right. I'll leave you with the testimonials, thank you very much.

So, I think for those of you thinking of preferencing the Northside and we all know now if you see Tasnim coming towards you with a camera, make sure you hide.
So that concludes the summary of the individual rotations, and so we'll move on to a bit of a Q&A session.  I think one of the things to highlight with the choice of places you now like - sometimes you might feel it’s going to be a make or break. Whichever rotation, I choose is going to be the difference between what happens when I get the exam, which AT program I get into, and as has been alluded to a bit tonight, a lot of what's going to happen through your basic physician training is based on who you are and the hard effort that everyone puts in. Like most physician trainees you don't need to be told to study hard, read up, and work hard.  That's all part of your DNA pretty much and the way I viewed this choice is kind of like you're sitting down at a three-course meal and you get to sort of work out what interests you, what experiences do you want? And as you see, there's lots of commonality between the rotations and there's also little nuances, and I think whichever rotation you end up in also as well, it's whenever you get a rotation or an allocation to a setting - think ok, what can I get from this rotation - what are the things I can learn here that I can't learn otherwise? And part of the tools of the college is actually to help you do that planning for each rotation, just really approach every rotation - say ok, what can I learn here that I won't be able to learn at any other stage in my BPT, because those three years will pass very, very quickly.

I should highlight that tonight's event is supported by the RACP and we've got some food outside. So, for those in the room, however, that's food for those in the room, we don't have Uber eats going to 100 different houses around the state, unfortunately, but we will now move on to a few questions. I would just like to take a moment to thank everyone who's presented tonight. Some have flown all the way from North Queensland - we know how far it is. We also know that Google Maps is probably not the best way to find your way to Townsville because it takes you one of two different routes that’s probably about 400 kilometres difference and mine goes substantially inland, but no, thanks to everyone for coming along and presenting and thanks to everyone who's attended here tonight, and everyone joining online.