Adult medicine basic physician training

My name is Prof Brian Wood a Physician from Redland Hospital.
I have the privilege of being the Adult Medicine Division President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, but I'm here in my role as one of the three network medical directors and we'll explain a little bit about what that means. I'm not going to do a big round of introductions at the start because we'll introduce you to people as they come up and speak. One person who isn't here, who I will just mention, is my colleague, Dr Paul Jauncey, who's away on parental leave. Some questions about flexible, we work flexibly as well and Katherine Berkman, who is one of our network rotation coordinators, who will explain is acting in his place. Two people who I will just introduce towards the back there because they aren't speaking. I'm sure we can give you a little chat to Ange and Cathlin, who are two of our wonderful admin team from the Queensland Physician Training Network.

Welcome. As I say, we'll do introductions as we go. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands here at the Royal Brisbane Education Centre.
the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and restate that as core business for what we do, both from a network and college perspective, and particularly pay any respects to elders past, present and emerging in any Aboriginal, Torres Strait Island and Maori people here today.

We have people online and hello everybody. I know we've got a webcam. Hopefully everything is working okay, and my team will be letting us know if it's not. A little bit of housekeeping, exits in case of emergency, green lights, follow the staff, get out. That seems to be the main key to that. Toilets at the front of the building.
Phones on silent, please and all virtual attendees, please mute your microphones.

I'm going to start things off this evening with a general talk about Queensland physician training. We're delighted that you're all here, which tells us you're at least thinking about wanting to start physician training in 2027 and that is a good thing. Come and work in the best state in the country, State of origin, et cetera, et cetera. So, we very much want that to be there and then we're going to pass around. Part of today is about why Queensland, why should you come and be a physician trainee? And part of it is our five different rotations. So, we go from selling the whole state in a nice collegial way to having a fight between various members of our team as to why theirs is the best hospital or network to work in a nice way. We all like each other. So, what are we going to talk about? A brief introduction to physician training in Queensland, find out about the different training rotations, briefly outline the application and selection process. There is a lot of information available on our website and online and we'll have some time at the end to meet with us. We've got a bit of a small bit of informal catering and ask any questions. We may not know every answer this evening, but we're going to have how to get in touch with us with things that we can pick up separately to that, but we'll try and help with that as we go.
What we won't be covering tonight and where to find that information. Detailed summary of time-based training requirements and technicalities of application to college BPT, that's covered at an RACP orientation in November and all available via the college website. We cannot deal with all of the complexities of international medical graduate and visa scenarios. If you need our help with that, you can contact us, and we will answer as best we can. We obviously can only influence the border agency partially as to how things happen. We will not be going to granular details of if I go to the Northside Network and 1st go to the Royal Brisbane Hospital,
what will the rotations within that hospital be? That is something that you can discuss with potential directors of physician education in individual hospitals. We just haven't got time, and the spreadsheet would blow your heads in terms of the details that we do. We're not going to talk about conjoint training. That's relatively niche, but for those people that want to co-train between physicians and pathologists, other combinations are available. We're not going to cover that level of granularity, intensive care, but again, that's things that we could help individuals with afterwards. We are not going to talk about other states' application processes. A. you shouldn't be going there and B. that's their problem.
So we're not going to do that in detail. Go and find it. We do get on with our colleagues in other states to a certain level, and how to prepare for BPT in depth. That's about the orientation from our RACP and your planning for training discussions that we'll talk about.
Do you want to be a physician? Hopefully, that's why you're here. Other professions are available if you're good with chainsaws and the like. But the reason as to why we're here, there's some things that are black and white eligibility questions for our process. So, you need to be able to hold general unconditional registration with the Medical Board of Australia by February 2027. So that is a black and white and if you do not meet that eligibility, you will be long listed out of the process, not shortlisted, because that is the nature of how we need to do things. You need to be eligible for registration with the RACP as a basic physician trainee. That information is on the RACP website, not too high a bar in terms of doing that, but at the right stage of your training and have completed internship by the end of RMO term 1, 29th of March 2026, in the year of application to the network. That sounds unusual, but it's for those people that sometimes start late. We have to make a cut off somewhere and that is where our cut off is. A lot of these things, we've had test cases of people applying for things and where you are. So essentially we appoint at PGY3 level, but that can be PGY2 and 4/5^ths.
What does physician training involve? Two years of pre-vocational training that most of you are probably doing or have done now, where you'll get exposure to medical and non-medical terms. Minimum of three years of training at BPT level, and during that time, expect 25%, so one term a year, of nights and relieving is what you are likely to be doing during that. Work based assessments, similar to what you do in prevoc with a new college curriculum that has been up and running for a year with some teething troubles like any new platform, but mostly people are getting used to it. And then the joy of written exams from BPT2. This is important. It's actually earlier than it was that you can, doesn't mean you have to sit them. So actually, just after a year of training, not sure that's always the right time, but the option is there. And then typically clinical exams in BPT3. We're just entering that season at the moment, so you'll see lots of stressed looking physician trainees walking around with briefcases be nice to them. Not like I will be in the mock exam at Redland on Saturday, but that's a different story. Three years of a minimum of advanced training, and we've got some advanced trainees with us here today who graduated from our programme, four years for dual training, and then work-based based assessments and a research project. We're not really talking about advanced training today, but that's just the future and where this will go and then about 40 years as a consultant, enjoy. The key players, and this is important, and it is complicated because to use Spencer and myself particularly as an example, we are employed by the Queensland Health Network. That is part of our job and that is what we are here representing today. Both of us have significant roles with the RACP and there is blurring between the college and the network and we're pretty good at if there is a this is a query for the college or this is for the network pointing you in the right direction. You're in the middle. We both work as doctors at our employing hospitals and Spencer, and to a lesser extent myself, have a role as a DPE, which is the way that things blend together between college network and hospital with responsibility paid for by the hospital to manage education within the hospital.  And so that's why that's a little bit complicated. Most of the time you get to know where it is and often your first point of contact will be the DPE in the hospital you're working in. But then often we work together, and we all speak to each other and we all know each other and we make things happen.  And so that's what the training programme might look like. These are Dr Jauncey slides and he hasn't got time to watch Star Wars anymore because he's got too many young children, so he's watching fluffy unicorns or something similar or Bluey or whatever's next. But we may start at the Princess Leia Hospital, not that it represents any other hospitals here. Tatooine Base Hospital and then Alderaan University Hospital. That's what it's likely to look at for most of you, but we will explain in some of the different rotation talks. There are a couple of differences of that, but mostly you will go to two to three hospitals during BPT.
Prior to applying to commence training. Read the website. It's there. It is not perfect. No website is, but there's a lot of good information that's in there.  Have a think, and that's why you're here tonight, which of the network rotations will best suit your training goals and indeed life goals? and discuss your plans for training with a DPE or an RACP educational supervisor and complete the preparation for training form that's on there to show that you have got some information and you're going in there with your eyes open.  That will normally be a DPE or an educational supervisor in the hospital you're working in. It doesn't have to be, but it should be relatively straightforward for you to get access and speak to them. They will expect it coming, they're used to it.
So what does training in Queensland look like? And this is what we're going to hear from different rotations. We have 5 rotations. We have, and I'm just going to talk very briefly now, so you're going to get a lot more detail, Far North, which is based around Cairns for all three years. North Queensland, which is based around Townsville for all three years. Northside, funnily enough, mostly north of the river, and some flyway’s, including Rockhampton and Mackay, within that, they're all north of the river. Southside, not all south of the river, but most of the hospitals are, but it does include Bundaberg and Harvey Bay along with options of private hospitals and Coastal, which is based principally around Gold Coast, but includes Robina, Redland and Logan. Logan is actually a hospital on both Southside and Coastal. We're going to talk a lot more about those with some of the detail behind it. Don't worry about the numbers here too much. That's levels of hospital. It's a training aspect which we deal with at RACP. How are you going to choose? Well, it depends what's important to you. Work, life or both, hopefully both. Training factors, what terms might you do? Do you want to do fly away? Huge advantages of doing it. Challenge of being away from home. The work environment, different hospitals have different personalities, I would say. Access to subspecialty terms. There are some hospitals that are going to have more subspecialties available than others, and size. Some people like tertiary hospital environments. Some people like smaller hospital environments. Getting experience at both is important, but you may choose that.
Lifestyle, where do you want to live? Where can your partner get a job? That is relevant because it depends on what your partner does. Not all jobs are available in all parts of the state. The big question, where do you really want to work in five years’ time? No, it doesn't mean that you'll always stay in the same hospital that you work in.  But it's always things worth thinking about and what do you want to do outside of medicine. Lots of information today as to where we go.
We have two levels of starting at when you are appointed as a BPT in Queensland Health, Registrar or SHO.  Typically, SHO PGY3, registrar PGY4 plus, but there can be some blurring around that and when we do our assessment process, we assess you at those different levels, but you may choose that you want to work at a lower level, and equally, you may be moved from one level to another in an individual hospital with your agreement as to how to do that.  And so typically, and each hospital is different. Registrar, you are on the Med Reg roster that you probably recognise, the SHO, you may still be doing resident type terms. If you want to be challenging yourself, experience with met calls, critical care, experience in medical subspecialties already, interested in a higher pay rate, it's not a huge difference, but it is a pay rate difference, be a registrar. If you are having slightly lesser confidence, limited medical term experience, want to do BPT in a hospital that only does SHO, start at SHO level.

We can talk about that with individuals and as I say, some of that is via our assessment process. Some of it is what do you want to do.

How to apply practicalities, Queensland RMO campaign, you're hopefully all well aware of that. That's where that happens and select ‘yes’, are you applying for a position on the Queensland Basic Physician Network, (Adult Medicine). There is a physician training network, (Paediatric Medicine). Be careful, don't take the wrong one of that, children are scary.
So that's where you need to look at in terms of doing that and complete all of the relevant network questions. So that's the where to do and when to do that.

How do we select that? The selection of basic physician, it's not hidden, it's transparent. The selection of basic physician trainees is based on suitability assessed against the following domains. Trainee is a learner, not surprising, commitment to the people of Queensland.  We are all privileged to be paid by the Queensland taxpayer and we have a duty to provide care to them.  Trainee is a team member, trainee is a professional, trainee is a decision maker and trainee is an after-hours clinician. That's what we're looking for. How do we score that? Again, we're being really transparent. So 60% of your score will be your interview that we do. I'll talk about those in a second. 20% on what you write, the short statements that are in there, and you will notice significant bonus if you have rural and regional background, medical school or clinical experience and that is following lots of very clear evidence regarding what we need for rural and regional health care from both Queensland Health and the RACP. The bit we will talk about, IMGs, visa holders with valid work rights are ranked with all of the other candidates. So it's not citizens above anybody else. We rank all of that together.
The interview process, you all have been through virtual MMI format interviews, I suspect, by now. Six stations, all online. The team run a fantastic job. We have occasional hiccups. My one bit of advice is make sure you're in a quiet place with headphones you've used before and practiced using Teams and check that you're not going to have dodgy internet trying to do it with somewhere that doesn't work, but mostly it works flawlessly. Ladies at the back, make the magic happen. There will be clinical and professional questions about scenarios commonly experienced by a starting BPT. If you've worked in ED or medicine, in a hospital in Queensland or elsewhere in Australia or elsewhere in the world, they will not be the hardest question you've ever seen. If you aren't shortlisted or suitable, you'll be notified and have the opportunity for feedback to assist in reapplying next year or change your preferences.
Interview dates, barring catastrophe, they're already set here. So they are going to be taking place from the end of July to the start of August. Busy few weeks for us as a team as we get through an awful lot of interviews each day. Looking forward to it already.  And so the selection outcome you may get from that interview process that you are suitable and selected to a reg or SHO position in your preferred rotation. You're suitable and selected to a reg SHO position in an alternate rotation. There are obviously only so many jobs in each of our rotations.  But one interview can transfer across the whole state, which is a significant, I said I wasn't going to say much about other states. That's a lot better than the rest of the country. So, one interview and you can be appointed elsewhere in the state, and that's okay. You just haven't scored. All interviews are a selection is a competition.  A bit of it is suitable or not suitable. Most of you will be suitable. It's are you scoring high enough to beat your competition, which is all of you in this room. And there may be some people that have felt suitable and wait listed. Don't be too down heartened if you're in that because there is a lot of flux of people deciding actually the offer they've just got from New South Wales is what they really want with their life.  But at the same time, we will have people that are appointed that are on that wait list, or you are told that you're not suitable. Again, any interview, some people may just hit unlucky on the day or any process that happens there.

Tips for the selection process. Work as a PHO in regional Queensland.  Obviously, it may be too late right now, but that is going to help you. Get exposure to experiences common in basic physician training. That's both the things to write on your short statement, but it's going to make you do better in the interview. It's always better talking reality than made up scenario. Focus on doing things safely and targeted to the particular patient in the scenario. So, in any of these MMIs, try and put yourself, this is what I would do in the real world: say what you've done and what you would do. Read the question and follow the instructions. Explain using language the patient understands. Don't use medical jargon. Try and just how you would speak to a patient or a family when there's a problem.
Training programmes, the first year of your training will usually be completed in one setting. That's not everywhere. We've got to follow our RACP accreditation. We do have some six months, six months in year one, but we try and do one year in the first setting.  They will all usually be six months, except for some secondments that may be three months. We'll talk a bit about some of those, but most of the time you'll be in one setting for six months. You should expect to do, particularly on our two biggest rotations, Northside and Southside, to spend one year not in easy drive from Brisbane. So that may be a long drive for Southside, Harvey Bay, Bundaberg, or a realistic flyaway, Mackay and Rockhampton and Northside and to be fair, in Coastal, driving from Gold Coast to Redlands is becoming increasingly a long drive in terms of time as the traffic on the M1 gets more and more challenging.
For candidates that defer or fail an exam, in Queensland we do offer a fourth year on the training programme and a final fourth year barring need for extraordinary flexibility. So, there is an extra year available.

When preferencing those programs, where do you want to complete BPT1?
Where do you want to sit your exams? years two and or three?
Where do you want to do level 1 or level 2 time?  Do you want multiple level threes? So, Northside, you get the option of going to both the Royal Brisbane and Sunshine Coast or Royal Brisbane and Prince Charles. Southside, you get the opportunity of private hospitals. The team will talk more about that and what's most important to you and our strong advice is if there is a rotation you're particularly interested in,
email and speak to the NRC. We'll explain who they are of the rotation that you're interested in. Briefly, because there was a question about it, recognition of prior learning, if any of you have done something entirely similar to our basic physician training, you can get prior learning. This is an RACP, not a network process. Maximum of 12 months must be within the last five years and comparable to RACP training, often particularly ex-UK trainees that can do that, but you still need to do the exams, whatever. We're not going to talk much more about that today.
There's a whole on the college website, how to do that and what to do with that. But we account for that in network level. So helpful tips, review the network selection criteria, read the how to apply and other documents on our website and Google how to apply basic physician training in Queensland. Lots of information there.
So I'm not going to do any questions now. We're going to have Q&A at the end and then a bit of a chat and then I now was about to introduce my colleague, Dr Emily Shield from Cairns, but unfortunately, she's the acting NRC for Cairns and for unfortunate reasons, she can't be with us today at the last minute.  So I'm doing her slot. I would wish Dr Sharma was here just to wind him up because this is where we do sales pitch. I am not from Cairns. I do visit up there regularly and do some mini accreditations and we always say, would you buy a used car from Dr Sharma? I'll sell his car to you. So here we go. I've also got David Barcroft with me, who will add in anything as we're going and be available for Q&A.  David is currently a respiratory, advanced trainee at Princess Alexandra Hospital, but did his basic physician training at Cairns and is very kindly come along. He was the Chief Med Reg in Cairns as well. So just chirp up or come and join me, David, if there's anything I'm getting wrong as we go.

So, you want to go to Cairns is the bottom answer, because you're quite close to the Great Barrier Reef. Again, there are lots of both life and work reasons as to why to go to Cairns. Some of you will know it well. 180,000 people swells with an awful lot of tourists and a hugely culturally diverse hospital, about 10% of First Nations people, seasonal workers, tourists, backpackers, but it really is very pretty.  Spencer worked there as well as a BPT and will tell you lots of the good things about Cairns and the sun shines even in winter.  It is a long way away. Melbourne is closer to Brisbane than Cairns is, which is an interesting fact and there's another 1000 kilometres to the top of the Cape York Peninsula and I think that's one of the huge advantages of Cairns is that proper tropical North Australia, you will learn tropical medicine, that there are not many places in Australia that you can do that. If you have to go to Townsville, sorry, it's 4 hours drive down the road, but there's not much reasons to go and see an army camp. So definitely if you're choosing between the two, Cairns would be your option. Because if nothing else, it's got an international airport that flies to a lot more places than the Gold Coast. Sorry, Dr Sharma, and we can go directly and that its connectivity is actually a huge advantage for that as well. I think more importantly, it's a big hospital with pretty much all of the tertiary specialties present and going with a huge expansion happening and again, anybody who hasn't been there, the fact that you literally overlook the Coral Sea from the hospital, as it is, couldn't be much closer to the sea with a view, walking distance to the Esplanade and lots of nice restaurants, plentiful accommodation full electronic medical records, doctor's lounge with showers, lockers, bedrooms, pool table, I seem to remember in there as well. A strange statue of a crocodile or something and various other things, but there we go.
This, I think, if you're really looking at a medical reason, are the actual true opportunities of getting out and going to some proper remote and rural clinics. Huge area of underserved population with lots of wonderful things to do as well. My children remember vividly seeing a tree kangaroo. I didn't even know they really existed outside our accommodation up on the Atherton Tablelands, which if anybody hasn't been there is truly stunning as well. But back to the medicine, all medical specialties except cardiothoracics and neurosurgery and almost all of the consultants are 100% public, hugely invested. Superb educational culture. I've been up there and come to Grand Rounds and it's just done in some ways good old-fashioned how to do medicine in a nice way three years in the same hospital. That I think is a huge advantage. There are disadvantages as well of not seeing all of the things and that's the same as at Townsville that the team will tell you about whole aspect of being able to do that in one place. There are probable some trips to secondment sites, including Atherton, with all of the positives that I talked about, and Innisfail. You might meet Bob Carter on the street. I don't know whether that's an advantage or a disadvantage but certainly be interesting.  So those are some of the real positives of going up to Cairns and again, I am very happy to vouch for the unique hospital culture. Even though it's a tertiary hospital, it feels like a true, small, very friendly, no hierarchy, some ludicrous shirts worn on a Friday, which I can speak for, rotates with Townsville holding the Far North Queensland Physician Conference. That's a good day, of which I have had the joy of speaking at. Busy RMO Society, lots of social events. As I say, Tropical Friday attire, annual Junior Dr event, Trot and the Tropics Run Club, if you're on the borderline of psychopathy, that's all right. That sounds like a good idea. But loads of good things going on. The medicine is truly unique, often late, often advanced presentations, a really strong general medicine department.
You will be doing a fair bit of Gen med through BPT, but into the specialties, high burden of rheumatic heart disease, pulmonary and extrapulmonary TB, as I say, melioidosis. So, one of the previous NRCs for Cairns, Simon Smith, is a true Australian expert in melioidosis as to where that's happening.  Lots of advanced diabetes, lots of renal disease. Some of this in all of regional Queensland, you'll get opportunities to see that and quite a strong research culture as well. From a personal point of view, my colleague Eddie Strivens, who's a geriatrician as I am, is hugely published on
dementia in rural and Aboriginal communities. So, there's good research opportunities up there as well. We've talked about the research in there. Lots of education, proper protected education, good exam support. That's the advantage of relatively small hospital people getting to know you.  They have an excellent pass rate, definitely better than Gold Coast and well above the, are we not allowed to say that, Spencer, sorry. I just thought I'd throw that in there. I'm not being mean now. I'll tell Sid off later and he won't have heard it, so it'll be okay. We do our NRC say we've all got the best pass rate. Queensland has a perfectly good Australian average equivalent pass rate across all of our hospitals. No fly away terms. So, you will be settled. You can buy a house, you can rent a house, you can be in one place for three years, cheaper than Brisbane when it comes to all of that.  Cultural stuff, Tablelands produce at Rusty's Market. Surprising, I didn't write these slides. I always thought there'd be good, excellent restaurants and bars up there and lots of art festivals. So, to summarise, why Cairns, supportive, friendly, I will vouch for that. Good specialty terms, high pass rates. unique demographic in tropical medicine and excellent lifestyle and adventure. So that is the Cairns advert. Again, we're not doing questions after individual talks. David, is there anything I haven't said that you want to add?
There you go, I passed. So, moving onwards, I'm now back to being the medical network director and all of our rotations are equal, some are more equal than others. Watch Animal Farm. I'm going to move on to my colleague Spencer Toombes, as one of the other network medical directors, general physician and DPE at to Toowoomba Hospital, and he's going to talk about flexible work arrangements and mid-year entry. Thank you.

Thanks, Brian appreciate it. Right, so you'll realise that we're going to sort of leaven this conversation as you learn about each individual rotation and why or why you would choose not to go there. We're going to punch in some little additional details about network training to answer some of the many questions that have been emailed to us. So Flexible work arrangements are a fundamental part of sort of workplace entitlements now and I can certainly vouch that over the last 10, 15 years, certainly over the last five years, we've gotten reasonably good at it.
It used to be one or two hospitals in Queensland were the flexible training places where you would go if you needed flexibility, whereas now pretty much all of them are committed to providing you with flexibility. So, what might you need? You might need a part time position ranging from anywhere from less than one down to 0.2
FTE, so one day a week equivalent. It's very convenient for Rosters out of webcam range. OK, took up an error. Hello. Now they won't be able to hear me. No, we'll see how we go. I won't be able to read the slides. No, we're good.

Job share arrangements. So, if we have a pair of individuals that are going to match up to one FTE between them because rosters are generally written for one FTE. That's very convenient for rosters secretaries and for departmental directors. But certainly, there are jobs around that are less than one FTE, which an individual can do. There are lots of reasons why you might need extended leave. Parental leave is an obvious one, but illness or illness in a family member, other elements. And this is my opportunity to plug that we're now seeing linked research, part-time research positions. There are a couple we're hoping are going to be funded as soon as next year for the Royal Brisbane, where you might do a research job over two years at 0.5 and do 0.5 training in that role. So that's very much about to appear on the table. If that's your cup of tea, then ask some questions about that at the meal of the Royal Brisbane team who are putting that together. If you need flexible training, it's obviously not going to affect your selection onto the programme at all. We do the selection process blind to whether you're going to be flexible or not and then preferences for part-time training are collected in September as part of the preference survey at the same time as we're collecting preferences about which hospitals you want to work out, what terms and not what individual terms you want to do, but what sequence or lines you want to do through your training program. And we do our best to match candidates to available part-time training and in terms of who gets what, you know, ultimately we've got a rank order, and we can apply that. But also, we will look at individual cases for special consideration and use that to determine which trainings we can offer. Now, if you are not matched to a training position initially, then there is certainly a Teams chat group where you can find other like-minded people who need flexible training and seek out opportunities for shared training and ultimately, we will do our best to match people to their needs. Now, there's a whole pile of things to think about. Flexible training sounds like a great idea, and sometimes it is exactly what you need, but it comes with challenges. And the principal challenge is that training is, while we're moving towards this hybrid model of competency, and time-based training. Ultimately, it's still time-based training and if you're working at a fractional appointment, say 0.5, it's going to take you twice as long to complete training. If you are in your first year of training and you want to be eligible to exam, it's going to take you two years to be eligible, for your written exam, it's going to take you four years at 0.5 to be eligible for the clinical exam. And that time is ticking over. So that's probably the principal challenge. But you also need to think about some of these other issues. Where are you going to work? How long are you going to be in a part-time arrangement? Where are you prepared to work? How much flexibility do you have in terms of getting a flexible position?  What's your work pattern going to be? Is it going to be half a week on and then hand over to your colleague? Is it going to be one week in two? How will leave be managed if you are job sharing? Are you both going to be on leave at the same time? If not, how will the institution cover for you? How will you hand over safely? What will happen if your job share partner wants to change their hours and you're not ready to. So, all of those things are worth thinking about before you enter into the flexible training space. What else is flexible? We're having some trainees who will defer commencement on the network for up to six months. So, they don't start in January, they start in mid-year.  Obviously, that presents challenges for hospitals. So, the sooner we know about that, the better and it is absolutely possible to move trainees, say, from the south to the north, from the coastal to the far north. But when we do that, again, we need notification, and we need a good reason for doing it because where the number of moving parts involved in shifting trainees through three years of training across these networks is substantial and breaking a set of network lines to move you to another rotation, while it is perfectly possible to do, is challenging.  We need a good reason, and then we need as much notice as possible to make that happen. It's also important to remember that there is an RACP process for interruptions to training. If you're going to be away from training for more than six months, you need to notify the college. If you're going to be away from training for more than two years, then the college may actually ask you to do top-up training.
to re-enter the clinical space. And that's, again, sort of decided by and large based on where your experience has been and what you've been doing during that interruption.

The other thing that we are continuing to offer is the possibility of mid-year entry into training. I'm running out of time, so I'm not going to run through all the details here, but clearly, from this year forward, we are only doing mid-year entry to training for people in a registrar position. We're not doing it for SHOs and if you had a good reason why you could have started training that year and didn't and just chose not to, then that is not a reason for entering into mid-year training. We need a reasonable excuse, a reasonable reason for committing. But essentially, if you are working in an eligible, a PHO position, if the hospital at which that position resides has capacity to train you in terms of supervision and education, and you pass the network selection process in July, then you can potentially start training six months early in August. That will mean that you get a bit more flexibility going forward because you're six months ahead of your peers. All righty, that's the eligibility conditions and again, Brian's already talked about the general unconditional registration, eligible for college registration, and at least PGY3 and in a working registrar position. So, if you want that, make sure you talk about it early with both the DPE at the hospital that you are working at. Do they have capacity to train you? And with the network rotation Coordinator for the rotation that you're on, do they have capacity to put you into the network process? and then obviously apply for training and succeed. All right, at this point, it is my pleasure to welcome Kathryn and Emily, who are coming from the Southside Rotation to spruik its wares.

Thanks, Spencer. So, my name is Kathryn Berkman. I'm the Southside Network Rotation Coordinator. So, we are a big network. We have the biggest network. We're 9 hospitals. We've got 3 tertiary hospitals, 4 level twos and two-level ones. So, we've got PAH, Greenslopes and Mater as our tertiary sites. Logan, Toowoomba, QEII and Ipswich as level twos and Hervey Bay and Bundaberg as our level ones.
As mentioned, all trainees are going to train in at least two and often three hospitals. And that's because part of your time-based training, you do need to spend time in a tertiary setting and spend time away from a tertiary setting. We are quite unique because we're the only network that you have the opportunity to train in a private sector, which is Greenslopes Hospital and this is actually a really popular option because most of you probably won't end up as full-time public consultants. Most people end up at least fractionally in the private sector. So, it's a really good time to understand how that works and get your foot in the door there. As you saw, we are a very geographically vast network, so you do have the opportunity to go to beachside places like Harvey Bay and Bundaberg, but then there's also training lines that are in the metropolitan area as well.  So if you're selected onto the Southside, we'll send you some training lines to preference from. I think there was about 60 last year. I'm trying to whittle it down to more like 40 for this year and you'll be able to work out what's important to you. You know, where do you want to be when you sit your exams? Where do you want to spend more time at a tertiary centre and go for a six month stint at Bundaberg or Harvey Bay. Your preference 10 lines, and I did my very best to give you the best that I can. I am looking into trying to use AI to help me do this this year, but it's a very complicated beast. So, this is just some of the options, but there's many, many, many more than that.  Like all of the network sites, we have comprehensive exam prep. So, for your written exam, you'll have locally available didactic lectures, but we're also piloting a new network-wide teaching program that's going to kick off later this year. That's going to sort of run on a two-year cycle.
For your clinical exam, you'll have access to short case teaching, long case teaching. You'll be rostered to at least two or three mock exams and we try and do at least one exam at a different site. So, you get that opportunity of what it's like to go to a new hospital and try not to get lost. We've got loads of subspecialties across all of the sites. So if there's something in particular that you're interested in, then we will have a site that offers that. And I think the thing that, you know, I'm the most grateful for my training is that you have the opportunity to be trained by and mentored by our supervisors who are experts and some of which are world experts.  There's lots of research opportunities, so notably there's the TRI at PA and also the Mater Research Institute, but every one of the hospitals, there's lots and lots of research going on. So, if you approach your consultants and your advanced trainees, I'm sure that they'll be very happy to have extra sets of hands.  We're very committed to flexible training, so we're able to offer flexible training at all of our sites. Every person who's asked us for a flexible training arrangement, we've been able to accommodate, but we do ask that you speak to us early because the more time we have, the more flexible we can be and the better we can cater to what your training needs are. If you have an unplanned interruption or change to wanting to be in a flexible arrangement, it is likely that we're going to have to alter your future allocations, but that's just to meet your needs and make sure that you're in the right setting at the right time.
Oh, so that's my slides already. So, I'm going to hand over to Georgia, who's one of our graduates, to tell you about her training experience.

Hello everybody I'm Georgia and as mentioned, I'm one of the Southside graduates very recently. I'll be taking you through today in brief my training pathway to get me to where I am now. So, I actually am an interstate graduate, and I took the advice to come across to Queensland. So, I graduated in 2020, and I did my internship
in Adelaide and then I, back in the day when you could, I went straight through to BPT and completed my first year there and then during that year, I met my now husband, who is a Queenslander and a staunch Broncos supporter and I've come across, and I had to sit through this as well and decide that I was going to be sitting in for a variety of reasons, which I'll come to shortly. I ended up choosing to go for the Southside and was very lucky to be selected and I completed my BPT2 at Ipswich and then subsequently my BPT3 at the PA where I sat both my divisional written and clinical exams.  I then completed my first year of endocrine training last year at SCUH, and I am now back at the PA.  So, in terms of my Southside experience and some of the reasons why I think that you should also go for the Southside, firstly, you really do have an exceptional exposure to a very wide range of sub-specialty terms. You also are very well supported during your admitting and after-hours shifts, which is something that I think is really valuable as a med reg. Obviously, you do spend about 1/4 of your time doing after hours shifts. So having those levels of escalation and teaching is a very fundamental aspect that you should consider and I also cannot speak highly enough of the excellent exam preparation that I was able to have through Queensland and particularly Southside. So, this is just a list of some of the particular sites that I was, sorry, specialties that I was able to undertake. Briefly, just to go through from an Ipswich perspective, you do have a wide range of subspecialty and again, your general medical terms are actually very, I found them really excellent because you often do get even through that very complex general medical patients who you are working up from the get-go, and to speak to the PA, again, I was very fortunate to have a wide range of specialties, particularly endocrine, which is what I was most interested in and also to have exposure to transplant, noting that the PA is a major transplant centre for renal candidates in particular, and one of the benefits of these two hospitals and other hospitals in the Southside is that you have a very complex patient population and this in and of itself is a privilege and also presents lots of excellent learning opportunities.  With regards to my afterhours experience, which again does form a considerable portion of your training, I found that there were excellent opportunities here both at Ipswich and the PA, specifically the fact that ICU is actually involved at handovers and just applied for the PA in particular, there is a dedicated after hours care unit and this is run by Dr Jack Lockett. It's an excellent program with dedicated teaching. So, you actually have an hour paid to every after-hour shift, go along and get some education, which I think is really excellent and helps with team building and even simulation sessions. And then when it comes to the exam preparation itself, again, very dedicated written exam experience with weekly MCQs and tutorials and I was able to even participate when I was at Ipswich, which I found very helpful. Lots of mock exams and again, high pass rate.  With the clinical exam, I was at the PA and again, weekly bedside tutorials, weekly long cases, both public and private, lots of dedicated didactic sessions and I was able to actually get three to four exams and I do find that there was lots of opportunity to have extra exams as well and again, high pass rate for my cohort.
and lots of rostering support as well. Ash Wilkinson was very helpful for me in helping to attend all those exam preparation courses and a great culture there to promote that, and again, a culture that's very supportive through that and just to plug that there's great sunsets in Queensland, but particularly Ipswich and PA.
And so other aspects of my Southside experience to flag. Again, lots of research opportunities available, as Kathryn has already alluded to. Also, great medical education opportunities, which is something else that I found really, really valuable. We are affiliated with UQ, so lots of teaching for medical students and also intern teaching available and I did find it again, in summary, very welcoming introduction to Queensland and a great seamless transition to endocrine and really, you know, made me want to come back to the PA in my second year now. This is a lovely little note that I got from one of the students recently on one of my terms. So, you do really get valuable teaching exposure and then finally, this is me these days. So yeah, very exciting ten of events. Thank you, very fancy sign. Thank you, Georgia and please feel free to head off.

So, I'm going to wear another hat now and I'm going to pretend to be Paul Jauncey or channel Paul Jauncey and we're just going to go over some of the teaching that's available at a network level.  So, when you're thinking about becoming a physician, it's good to think about it as an apprenticeship. So, there is a time-based component. You need to do three years and then I would definitely recommend going and having a look at the curriculum on the college website because it is fairly complicated. But it falls under these three ideas of be, do, and know.  So be, is your competencies, there are all those things that are in that wheel. These are the skills that we expect you to have by the time you complete your physician training. And then your entrustable professional attributes, things like being competent, things that we could have you doing at an arm's length, you know, with very remote supervision. So, you should be competent with prescribing, with ordering investigations, with managing acutely unwell patients and then of course your knowledge guides, which is what will be examined in your exams. So, after your three, well during your three years, you'll do your written and your clinical exam and then get through all of that and transition to advanced training.  I have just added this slide because we got a few questions when you were registering around the assessment process. So, as I mentioned, there's three years, which are your three phases of training. In each of those phases, you do 12 learning captures and 12 observation captures. So, one of each of those per month for each rotation that you do, you do a progress report and then you have a phase report at the end. So, you do that three times. When you're looking at sitting your exams now, this has moved into a phase-based assessment. So, once you have completed your first phase of training, in your second year, you are eligible to sit your divisional written exam.
We don't expect you to set it in your second year, and I think you probably would be better placed to look at it for your third year. But if you're someone who's coming to training with a lot of experience already and you think you'll be ready in that earlier timeframe, that is now an option. It's run twice a year, in February and in October and then once you've passed your written exam and you've passed your first two phases, your first two years, in your third year, you can look at doing your clinical exam and that one's only run once a year. We got some questions about, you know, when should you be thinking about your exams? I would think map out, you're going to need at least 12 months and a lot of people will spend 18 months preparing for your written exam. Go to the college website, there's about 18 different specialties that you need to cover. Map them across that time period and make sure you've got enough time to get through all of that and do some revision at the end.
Find a study group, divvy up all of that work, and then get together and teach each other because that's the best way to learn. There's lots of resources. There's a fantastic college lecture series. You'll have lectures at your local hospital. You'll look it up to date and it's also good to do some MCQ practice, mostly to learn how to answer the MCQs because they're their own beast.
So you'll have a lot of teaching available locally in your hospitals, but as a network, we ensure you have equitable access to education. So, we set a protected standard for exam prep. We work with the chief med registers at each of the hospitals to make sure that the education, that trainees are being supported no matter where they are to access education and no matter what stage you are in your training that you're accessing education, and we have a number of programs that we share statewide.
So when you're starting in your first year, we have an education series which is targeted at that phase. So, we have topics like planning your basic training, how to develop relationships with your supervisors, your ward-based assessments, how to prepare for your exam. We've got some lectures around stepping up and team leadership and time management and then for your written exam, we have a statewide online MCQ tutorials on specialised topics that we run. So, things like genetics and clinical pharmacology can be quite hard to put on locally. So, we do that at a state level. We also do an MCQ boot camp for each of the specialties towards the end of the year, where you send us all your really tricky remembered questions and we scratch our heads and try and answer them.  We offer an online practice MCQ exam, which you can also access if you're doing the October, written the last year's exam and then often within a network, we share a lot of resources as well. In terms of your clinical, we run a clinical exam preparation program. So that is a
two-day weekend sort of crash course. It's a really great course and then there's some evening lectures which supplement that. There's a performance psychology session that we run annually and then locally, we set the standard of what has to be occurring at any site that has exam sitters. So that's making sure you've got your long cases and your short cases and in addition to all of that, there's also the Queensland Internal Medicine Education Program you can access. It's run by the Gen med ATs, and it's a really good program, some really great lectures and we facilitate access to other programs like A-Z of Stroke.  And I will hand over to Sid, there he is.

Thank you, guys. Sorry, sorry we were a little bit late, but while we were away, I believe people were talking behind my back.  But I've been told, but you know, they had also given me tasks to do. So, I was trying to complete my tasks before coming here. So that got me a bit delayed. But anyway, we're here and the traffic was terrible. Then who would want to live in Brisbane? Right. So terrible. But, and if you do move to the Gold Coast, we are now the first city that has signed up to Skyports, which will be basically little Uber helicopters that will take you from one building to another. So maybe you'll be traveling between our sites on the chopper. Right? So again, all fun stuff. Look, I'm not going to talk for long. I'm just going to give it off to our chief medical registrar, who is probably one of our most senior registrars and advanced trainees at the Gold Coast and she can talk through her experience and a little bit about actually the hospitals that you might enter and work in and then I might just take it back for one minute at the end. So over to Monika.

Good evening, everyone. So, as Sid said, my name is Monika. I'll tell you a little bit about myself initially. So, I studied medicine in Ireland, and I came to Australia about 10 years ago. Initially, probably just for a little bit of an adventure and some fun and I landed in the Gold Coast, and I loved it so much that that's where I have stayed ever since. So, I completed my basic training with the Coastal Network and subsequently, I'm currently doing my advanced training in general medicine and I'm currently the chief medical registrar as well. So, I'll tell you a little bit about our network. So, our main hospital is Gold Coast University Hospital, which is a major tertiary referral centre and on the Coastal network, you do two out of your three years working in a Gold Coast Hospital and the remainder of the time is split between our affiliated sites. So, for example, you might end up doing six months in Robina Hospital and six months in Redlands Hospital and that photo I took there is one of my after-hours shifts as a resident many years ago, one of the sunsets from one of our wards in the hospital. So it's a lovely place to work. Why pick the Coastal Network? Well, I have to say for me, it's truly, it was a truly fantastic workplace and I think one of the reasons for this is because there's just such a friendly culture and everyone is very supportive and there's a lot of collegiality and I think it's one of the reasons that I've stayed working in the Gold Coast for so many years. We offer a very comprehensive examination preparation programme and I'm not just saying that it's great because I'm in charge of organising it this year, but we've had great feedback from cohorts of past candidates.  We offer our own dedicated lecture series for the written exams as well as the clinical exams and plenty of opportunity to practice long and short cases and we've got a great array of very dedicated staff who love to teach and
of course, opportunities to do mock examinations as well and we know that this is a very stressful period in your lives during the exams and very important times of your lives. So, we try to support you as best we can and hopefully lead you to exam success.  Gold Coast University Hospital is a tertiary hospital. We have plenty of medical subspecialities, depending on what your interests are. You know, we've got all the major subspecialities, Cardiology, renal, respiratory, neurology, medical oncology and more recently, rheumatology as well, just to name but a few and of course, this provides great opportunities looking forward as well into the future if you're considering advanced training to get your foot in the door with your preferred speciality and hopefully this, you know, to help going forward with your AT applications. There's plenty of opportunities to get involved in research, audits, and we are affiliated as well with Griffith University and Bond University. We host medical students from both of those schools which is great if you're interested in education.
So I suppose one of the major draws of the Coastal network is the lifestyle on the coast. If you're someone who loves the outdoors, it's really the perfect place to be. Whether you want to go for a stroll on the beach in the evening, there's loads of national parks around with a lot of natural beauty. It's just such a lovely place to live and work and also very family friendly. When I initially came to the Gold Coast, I came solo but have since met my husband and have two children now, and it's just such a great place to raise kids and there's plenty of great schools and things for your children to do so that's another bonus. Our department is very supportive. We know that obviously medicine is very important, but we all have interests outside of work and we like to support you to pursue your other interests. There's a great work-life balance in the hospital, of course, everywhere you go and you know, there are times when it's going to be very, very busy but we always make sure that you are granted all the leave that you are entitled to and the feedback generally is that the workloads are pretty manageable and pretty good. We host multiple social and networking events throughout the year as well and we have a welcome dinner and various team building activities throughout the year. So, we do like to give you all an opportunity to get to know each other and create a bit of a sense of camaraderie in the hospital.  This is just a sample of, oops, sorry. This is just a sample of how my rotations looked when I went through my training. So, I did my first year as an SHO and had a chance to rotate through some of the sub-specialties that I really enjoyed and subsequently, you can see that I progressed through my two years of BPT and that's all I have to say.
Thank you, Monika. Obviously, you know, these rotations are not everything, but you talked about during this time, you were able to have two children as well. So, I think that also speaks a lot about our ability to support people through even bigger things than just exams.  Right. So, look, that's probably all we wanted to bring to this meeting, but we'll be able to catch up with you afterwards for more one-on-one discussions, should you have any and if people, you know, do talk ill of me, I just take it as jealousy and a good compliment. Hey, so anyway, so I have the pleasure of introducing the next speaker so, Andrew is from RACP, he's our member support officer, and he's coming to give us a few words about the college. Thank you.

Awesome, well, hello everyone. My name is Andrew, as Sid said, I'm the Member Support Officer in Queensland. So, what that means is I'm here to support you, trainees and consultants throughout Queensland.  Now, I did want to just start today with a quick overview of what RACP is, who we are. So, we do exist to connect, train and represent all trainees and consultants, 30,000 of them from 33 different specialties. Our role is really to provide accredited training provide continuing professional development and education. We do assess overseas trained physicians if they would like to work in Australia or New Zealand and we also hold events including conferences, workshops, training sessions. Now there are two divisions of our ACP. We have the adult and we have the paediatric and child's health. Within this, there are chapters, as you can see on the screen here. We have addiction medicine, palliative medicine, and sexual health medicine and the RACP also has three faculties. Now, a faculty is an independent body within RACP. They offer their own vocational training programs, and they include occupational environmental medicine, public health medicine, and rehab.  More importantly, who should you contact at the RACP? These are some contacts that you should have. Firstly, there's me, the Member Support Office for Queensland and we do have, I do have colleagues in other states, but we won't talk about them today. I'm your local conduit to the college. So, we're here to help facilitate sessions on site, which really help
make sure you understand the training requirements. We help connect you to the right people at the college, but generally we're here to support you throughout your journey of training.  We have the basic training team. They're you go to for all training and assessment questions. They're the team that will also verify and accredit your training time.  We have the Queensland Trainees Committee. They're an active and engaged group of Queensland trainees. The committee really works to ensure that all trainees in Queensland feel supported, heard and connected.  Some of the initiatives that the college has for Indigenous students, or sorry, trainees, we call them deadly doctors. It's the collective term we use for members who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.  We have a range of initiatives, as you can see on the screen, to really support and encourage Indigenous trainees. Now, these include the fee initiative, where we remove the annual training fee and exam registration fees. The Indigenous Leadership Fund, which really provides funding to strengthen clinical and cultural leadership capabilities.  We also provide one-on-one coaching to support well-being, resilience and performance. There is also a complimentary briefcase if you qualify with the equivalent that you'll need for the divisional clinical exam and we also have the Indigenous scholarship and prizes, which really provide funded pathways into training.  We also have some other events and it's really timely. We only found out about these today for Indigenous trainees and members of the RACP. So, we have the RACP Deadly Doctors Forum in July in Sydney. It's an inaugural national forum that's going to bring together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members also Maori and Pacific members. They're going to share experiences; they're going to be able to build connections and really strengthen their professional networks.  We also have AIDA, the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association conference this year. It's in Perth in September and it's an opportunity to really continue professional development, network with like-minded doctors.  We have the Pacific Regional Indigenous Doctors Congress, which they call Pre-Doc, in November and December in Taiwan. It is a biannual international conference that again brings together Indigenous doctors, medical students and health experts from across the Pacific.  If you need more information, you can find this on the RACP website or there is an email address deadlydoctors@racp.edu.au. and my final slide today is just really highlighting some of the initiatives and the forward-thinking events of the college. So, this year, we're running events that are designed in person, but are also available in hybrid. So, you can really pick the topic that suits you. I would obviously here highlight the trainee conference in November as something that might suit you and even though that was the last slide, just want to remind you, if you do have questions, please reach out. My details are on the screen.  Thank you.

Thanks, Andrew and next we have my wonderful colleagues from Townsville, Emma and Anne

Okay, so I'm Emma Sganzerla. I'm one of the co-directors of Physician Education in Townsville, and I'm also a dual trained general physician and geriatrician. Just to give a brief overview of my progress through training, I graduated from JCU, completed my internship, my base, my RMO year, my BPT and started advanced training in Townsville because you can do all three years there. So, I stayed there. I then came down to Brisbane and worked at the Prince Charles Hospital for two years and then moved back to Townsville to finish my advanced training before I was able to obtain a job full time in the public hospital, working in both specialties and I did have two children during my training. So that was one of the benefits of the flexible training. Whereas Townsville, well, it's a little bit closer than what Cairns is, but not much. So, about 1300 kilometres from Brisbane. There's plenty of flights to Brisbane every day. There's flights to Cairns as well and there's also direct flights to Melbourne and Sydney.  We've got about 200,000 people in Townsville. It's a very diverse population. We service a really large rural population, and we also have a large demographic of Aboriginal, Australian and Torres Strait Islanders. So, it's a really great place to work.
Why choose TUH? It's the only regional tertiary referral hospital in the country with the catchment as far north as Cape York Peninsula and up to the Torres Strait Islands, west out to Mount Isa in the Gulf of Carpentaria and south to Rockhampton. Anyone, we do often have people transferred, not often, but we do have people transferred from Cairns to Townsville if they aren't able to get the treatment that they need in Cairns, as we have a few extra specialties in Townsville. We're a training hospital associated with James Cook University, and we've got about 785 beds, rapidly expanding, getting lots of new buildings and that hospital expansion, there's plenty planned in the next few years, so it's going to be a lot of growth. One of our recent developments is that we've got the North Queensland Kidney Transplant Unit that's up and running. That's been going since August last year and they are going really well. So that's fabulous and we're soon to start deep brain stimulation treatment in the hospital as well.  We've got about 800 doctors in Townsville, so it's a big, big community and it's an only one service hospital. So, we've got a tertiary ICU, we've got all of the surgical specialties, we've got CCU, we've got cardiothoracic, kidney transplant, dialysis plenty of different things. So basically, any of your interests, we have something to suit and our hospital is fully electronic and IMR integrated. So, everything is done electronically.  In terms of services, you can see it's a massive list, so I won't go through all of them, but it's a big hospital and I think sometimes when people come up to Townsville, they think that we're this tiny little regional place, but our hospital is actually quite big and there's lots of learning opportunities there. In terms of rotations, we have rotations available in basically all of the major specialties.
So that's great and our trainees also have the opportunity to rotate out to Mount Isa Hospital, where you can do rotations in either general medicine or renal medicine. That does come with a financial bonus if you go out to Mount Isa. There's, I think, $15,000 bonus for going out there for the six months and our trainees have a really great experience out there. That's really rural medicine. So that's really exciting.
What's different about our network? So, we're the largest and only level 6 regional tertiary RACP level 3 hospital. You can do all three years in Townsville, and I did that personally and that enables you to really get to know your supervisors, your mentors and we do a lot of teaching across the hospital as well. The Mount Isabel based hospital rotations are also a benefit and we're looking to actually expand that in the coming years, hopefully, if everything goes to plan. We give two specialty rotations per year for network trainees throughout all three years and then we do have AT positions available in essentially all of the sub-specialties. Things that we don't have are clinical pharmacology, immunology and clinical genetics, but everything else we can do in Townsville.  In the basic physician, in terms of basic physician training in Townsville, we're enthusiastic and we're pretty motivated. We've got a physician training unit that consists of three of us and I'll show that on the next slide. We've got established local written and clinical exam preparation programs and our results have been very good in the past few years. We've got a close network of senior medical officers and ATs and we like to really be strong mentors for our trainees as they go through and we're really focusing on trying to get our trainees to return to Townsville Hospital as consultants and that's actually been very successful over the past few years.  So, the Physician Training Unit is myself, Suji, who's a general physician and she's also she also does obstetric medicine, and Craig Costello, who's a neurologist. We've got our network Coordinator and then our Chief Medical Registrar is Anne, she was a bit too nervous to come up and talk, but she'll be outside to answer any questions afterwards.  And then other lifestyle perks. So, it's a beautiful place to live. Free parking. I thought that was a pretty good incentive. There's no long commutes. I'm considered to live a long way from the hospital, and my drive is 15 minutes. People are like, oh my God, you live all the way out there.
Cheaper rent and cost of living, so that's a consideration and regional relaxed lifestyle. So, we've got all of the tertiary level opportunities, but it's a much more relaxed lifestyle. The weather at this time of year, in particular in Townsville, is really beautiful and this photo is basically this time of year. And there's lots of places around Townsville that are close, easy to get to, and you can do weekend trips too. So, like Magnetic Island and the Whitsundays and we were really excited because Mecca's coming in September.  All right, so, if you would like any more information, please come and have a chat to us outside. We've also got multiple different email addresses that you can choose to contact us on. But I would really encourage you to consider coming up to North Queensland for some of your training time at least. All right onto the next person. Thank you.

Thank you and I would echo all of those good comments, despite what I said earlier. I love my trips up to Townsville as well and our last of our formal presenters, my colleague, Dr Tasnim Zirapury, is going to talk about the Northside Rotation.

Hello everyone. I'll just, all right. So, I'm Tasnim Zirapury. I'm the Northside Rotation Coordinator and I'm also a nephrologist in my clinical life and at the moment I'm doing a little bit of an adventure at Coffs Harbour. So I won't talk about that tonight though and I think it's really good that all of my colleagues have already taken you through what the BBT training is like in Queensland and also what the other rotations are like, which makes it a little bit easier for me because I'll just say ditto, we've got everything that has been spoken about in the other rotations. We offer all that on the Northside plus more and I'll try to sort of keep my talk very brief tonight, and I'll probably talk about the plus more bits a bit more than the details of that have already been covered.  Okay, there you go.  All right, so I just want to give you an idea of how big we are. So, I always say that we are the biggest rotation, but I guess we are not because Kathryn says the same thing. Maybe we are both equally big. But if you look at the geographic footprint we've got, we extend right from this area here. That's that yellow bit, which is Metro North all the way up to Mackay, which is the red area. So, it's a substantial sort of area we cover. The only bit in the middle, the wide bay is covered by the Southside. So, it's a pretty big geographical footprint that we cover. We've got 7 accredited hospitals on the Northside that you will have an opportunity to train through.  Three of them are tertiary hospitals. They are very well known, well reputed. You probably know them. Royal Brisbane, Prince Charles and the Sunshine Coast. Level 2 hospitals or our regional hospitals, we've got Caboolture, Redcliffe, Rockhampton and Mackay. Caboolture and Redcliffe are within driving distance from Brisbane, so we often refer to them as drive away rotations and Rockhampton and Mackay, you actually need to relocate, so we call them fly away rotations and you will have opportunity to do about six months and maybe one year at rural regional centres and sometimes you may have opportunities to work across 2 regional centres.  I'll just talk a little bit about our training lines because there are some differences compared to training lines in other rotations. So, we have some additional opportunities and I'll just sort of talk about that. I think it, I don't recall it being mentioned earlier, but on the Northside or actually within Queensland,
this is a standard that you will get up front three-year training lines. That is right before, after your selection and into training. By November, before you start training, you'll probably know where you're going to be training for the subsequent three years. So, you'll know that up front, you can try, you can already start planning your training for the rest of the three years of basic physician training. What's unique on the Northside is that some of our training lines give you the opportunity to work across a couple of these tertiary centres. So, for example, you could be working at Royal Brisbane and Prince Charles, not at the same time, obviously, but your training lines, you will be covering those.  If you choose to, you'll have opportunity to work across maybe Sunshine Coast and Royal Brisbane or Sunshine Coast and Prince Charles. So, you do have those options. And once I start talking about those centres, it will sort of start to click in as to why that might be advantageous.  The other unique feature that we've got on the Northside is all our centres provide clinical exam preparation. So, we do have clinical exam preparation from our regional centres as well. It has been up and running for the last five years and we've had great success with this. So far, I know I'm not supposed to talk about percentages, so I won’t but I'll say only one candidate has failed a clinical exam amongst those who've prepared from a regional centre on the Northside. So that is something to talk about and I wanted to mention that.  Other unique feature that is how we sort of managed to give you such an excellent training and exam preparation is we collaborate, and we work together. So even though we are spread over a huge sort of area in Queensland, we do work very, very closely together so, all the DPEs on the Northside, we share our resources, including clinical exams. So, you'll have opportunities to prepare for mock exams, go to another centre across Brisbane to sort of practice your long cases as well. So not just the mock exams and you can do virtual long case practice with the physicians from different centres within our Northside as well.  So, we do really share our resources. Some of our lectures for written exam preparations are also shared across sites. So we are very, very well connected and you won't be isolated despite being maybe far away from Brisbane.  So I don't think I'll have enough time to talk about individual hospitals in detail, but I'll just give you a little bit of an overview, just a snapshot, and then you can come and ask me questions outside after the session and I'll take you through the details that you might need to know. Royal Brisbane, this is where we are today. So, you probably know a fair bit about Royal Brisbane.  It is one of the largest tertiary centres in Queensland and it is a centre for excellence in patient care, in teaching and cutting-edge research. It's campus, they've got the Clinical Skills Development Centre here, which you might have known about, and they do a bit of simulated teaching over there and you've got the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. I do really want to quickly mention that there are a couple of new programs that are coming up from Royal Brisbane that are going to be up and running, hopefully towards the end of this year. I won't go into details, but you can come and ask me about it later.  So one of the new programs they are sort of launching is the genomic immersion program, where the BPTs and advanced trainees could do three to six months of a genomic rotation, where you get to know about genetics of different across different subspecialties and the other thing that they're going to launch later this year is a combined training program, a combined training pathway with the basic physician training and research opportunities. You could do it part-time, especially in your first BPT year. We haven't structured this as yet but this is hopefully going to roll out later in this year. So, if you're interested in it, please come and talk to me about this after this presentation, and I'll sort of point you in the right direction for that.  Prince Charles, it's our main cardiothoracic referral centre. They specialise in heart and lung transplant and also they are one of the country's biggest geriatric medicine centres.
Sunshine Coast is the third tertiary centre. It's only about 100 kilometres from Brisbane and it's surrounded by iconic beaches and tropical rainforests. So, if you're looking for a little bit of adventure and excellent training programme, that's the place you probably want to go.  Redcliffe, so, Redcliffe is very close to Brisbane it's only about 35 kilometres. So, within half an hour you can be there, you can live in Brisbane, and you can get all the benefits of working in a regional centre, just a stone's throw away from the metropolitan area.  Caboolture is not far away, it's 45 kilometres from here. So again, driving distance from Royal Brisbane. Sorry, I mean from Brisbane, not just Royal Brisbane, but also it's halfway between Brisbane and Sunshine Coast. So, you can live in either area and still commute to Caboolture daily for your work. I won't talk a lot about all the specifics they offer.  Maybe I'll combine that in the end.  Mackay again, that's a very busy slide and you can see that Mackay Hospital itself is probably not visible, and it's overshadowed by all the natural beauty that it's surrounded by and the beaches. So that's one of the main features of working in Mackay apart from the excellent training programme that they provide and they're fully digitalised.  Lastly, we've got Rockhampton, so that's where I work as a nephrologist and it's one of the largest referral centres, regional referral centres in central Queensland and recently there has been a very big change in the leadership, both in the executive area and in the training leadership as well and this has led to the rollout of a very brand new and markedly improved training program, which I'm sure you all will enjoy.  I won't take you through all the terms, but practically every contemporary subspecialty is available on the Northside across the hospitals. I'll say specifically our regional hospitals; they do offer a lot of subspecialties and often our trainees are more likely to get core terms in their regional rotations so they do have a big, huge complement of core subspecialties.  So that's my contact over there, you can speak to me, we've got an open-door policy. You can call me anytime and we've got our Rotation Support Officer, Beth Parker, who's outside, I think, yeah, she's up there and you can meet her as well after this presentation and between the two of us, we'll try to look after you really well on the Northside.  These are the other contact details, but I won't go through that again. It's all available on the website. So, these are the DPEs and the Chief Medical Registrars.  I'm being told that we're pretty short of time, so I won't take your time up anymore, and I'll leave you with these testimonials to read through and please meet me outside if you've got any questions. I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody who took the time to come and speak to us all this evening.