AMD eBulletin – 23 October 2023
A message from your President
The Adult Medicine Division Chapter Presidents and I reviewed the frequency of the AMD ebulletin and have decided to move the AMD ebulletin from monthly to quarterly. We wanted to provide you, as an AMD member, with a more substantial update and help remove some clutter from your inbox.
AMD Council Meeting
The AMD Council (AMDC) met on 10 August 2023. This was our second meeting for the year and the first face to face meeting held since August 2019. I am happy to report that the meeting was well attended, with 31 of the 35 currently appointed members attending either in person or via Zoom. The AMDC discussed key areas such as education including the Curriculum Renewal and issues facing our Basic and Advanced Trainees. The AMDC also held breakout sessions in a “speed dating” style format, to discuss their five workplan initiatives and the activities aligned to each of the areas. Lots of great and insightful ideas where shared which we are in the process of incorporating into our AMD workplan.
We and the College can’t live in a virtual world
AMDC once more meeting face to face demonstrated how important it is for us, as Fellows and Trainees, to meet, network and share perspectives and wisdom. As clinicians many of us appreciate that an exclusively telehealth-based relationship is no substitute for the, at least occasional, face to face consultation. Similarly, it is difficult being collegial in an exclusively Zoom, Teams and WebEx world. I appreciate the issue of cost, inconvenience and carbon emissions and the rush by many organisations to use this to drive greater efficiency and budgetary savings. Nonetheless we are, by nature, social beings who use a spectrum of verbal and non-verbal communication that is not captured well by a small screen with a blurred background or confusing landscape.
AMD Council membership changes
The Adult Medicine Division (AMD) Council membership has recently undergone some changes due to the nature of the specialty society representative positions, as their terms follow their own Annual General Meetings. Professor Allen Cheng, Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases (ASID) representative, Dr Jason Pinner, Human Genetics Society of Australasia (HGSA) representative and Professor Vasi Naganathan, Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine (ANZSGM) representative, concluded their terms on AMD Council. Allen, Jason and Vasi demonstrated to me how AMD can strive to be greater than the sum of its parts. Their input into AMD discussions have extended well beyond their specialist craft group and provided solutions to our and other specialty societies problems. It’s that sharing of experience and applying it to new settings that avoids ‘reinventing the wheel’ and repeating mistakes that makes AMD valuable. I extend my thanks and appreciation for their participation in AMD Council activities.
We welcomed Professor Katie Flanagan (ASID representative), Dr Gemma Poke (HGSA representative), Dr Rob O’Sullivan (ANZSGM representative) and Professor Jackie Center (ANZBMS representative). I look forward to working with our newest Council members and progressing AMDs workplan with their insights.
Leadership Workshop Pilot
I’m excited to announce the launch of registrations for our first leadership workshop. Supporting and growing the physician leaders through investigating options for development of leadership skills is a key component of the Adult Medicine Division (AMD) Council’s 2023–2025 work plan. The AMD Executive Committee, with Dr Sharmila Ramessur Chandran as Program Lead, have been working hard behind the scenes to develop an engaging program to expand on Fellows leadership skills.
This workshop will be held in Melbourne on Saturday, 25 and Sunday, 26 November 2023, and is targeted towards new or mid-career Fellows who aspire to or are already emerging physician clinical leaders. Further information on the program is available on the Leadership Workshop website and regular updates will be posted on the AMD RACP Online Community (ROC).
If you have any topics that you would like our Division to consider, I encourage you to contact me via the secretariat at adult.med@racp.edu.au
Professor Graeme Maguire
President, Adult Medicine Division
AChSHM President’s Post
Kia ora koutou,
Last month, alongside other members of the AChSHM Committee, I attended the Australasian Sexual and Reproductive Health Conference (ASRH) 2023 in Sydney. I would like to extend thanks to Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) for organising this key event and to those who attended the conference.
We held our annual Fellows’ Update meeting during the conference. The meeting had a great turnout with many members joining us in the room as well as virtually on Zoom. We covered the Chapter and Training Committee priorities and discussed some of the issues our members are facing. We hope the session was valuable to all who attended. If you would like to know more information, please reach out to me via the Chapter Secretariat with any queries or ideas you may have.
On a side note, I would like to congratulate our Jan Edwards Prize winner for 2023, Dr Ranjit Samra, who presented at the ASRH Conference.
We encourage you all to share our available award and prize opportunities within your cohorts. These valuable opportunities can be found on the Foundation website. We would especially like to encourage applications for the AChSHM Indigenous Scholarship which has two available scholarships. Applications close on Tuesday, 31 October 2023.
The AChSHM Committee met on Wednesday, 13 September via videoconference to discuss progress on the Chapter workplan initiatives. These include important advocacy work such as lobbying for increased access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for those who are not eligible for public funded healthcare. Other advocacy taking place includes more sexual health services in Queensland.
Preparations are currently underway for the 2024 AChSHM Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) which will take place online in March 2024. The decision has been made to offer this event virtually every second year to ensure wider access and to give everybody the opportunity to be involved.
Our next AChSHM Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, 22 November via videoconference. Please let us know if you have any items you would like to be discussed or have any feedback for the Committee. You can contact us via our secretariat at shmed@racp.edu.au.
Ka kite anō au i a koutou!
Dr Massimo Giola
Australasian Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine President
AChPM President’s Post
Hello and kia ora,
We held our third AChPM Committee meeting last month on Tuesday, 19 September where we had the opportunity to confer on many important matters affecting our specialty. We met with our College Dean, Dr Kudzai Kanhutu, and discussed matters pertaining to the workforce and our work. This discussion will be used to update the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations to include the speciality of palliative medicine.
We also discussed the workplan initiatives our Committee is currently working on, such as improving palliative medicine education and implementing a plan to deliver the Spirituality Training Workshop from 2024 onwards.
On a side note, we were informed by the College’s Policy and Advocacy team that a replacement for Hydromorphone had been approved. LINK Healthcare pharmaceuticals has arranged the supply of hydromorphone hydrochloride oral solution 1mg/mL USP 473mL (Hikma), registered and marketed in the United States. This product supply is authorised under an approval granted by the Therapeutic Goods Administration under Section 19A of the Therapeutic Goods Act, 1989 until 30 September 2024.
The Australia New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM) Medical & Surgical Update 2023 will be taking place from 23 to 25 November at the Novotel on Collins in Melbourne. We would love to see you all taking advantage of such a great networking opportunity. The Chapter will also hold a Fellows’ Update meeting during the event for members to receive more details on the AChPM Committee’s work. A save the date for this update will be coming out shortly. See more details and register for the Medical & Surgical Update 2023 on the ANZSPM website.
Remember, we are always seeking volunteers to mark case study and research projects. There are CPD hours available for those who donate their time for this worthy activity. Details for these positions, including how to submit an expression of interest, are available on the RACP website.
The AChPM Committee is holding the last meeting of 2023 on Tuesday, 14 November. This meeting will give us an opportunity to reflect on the work we have done throughout the year and consider our action plan for priorities going into the new year.
If you have any feedback, questions or concerns to bring to the Committee, please contact us through the Chapter secretariat at PallMed@racp.edu.au or via the RACP Online Community (ROC).
Associate Professor Peter Poon
Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine President
Hello and kia ora,
I would like to begin by letting you all know of some very sad news we have received recently. Dr James Rankin, a driving force within Addiction Medicine, has passed away. Dr Rankin was luminary in drug and alcohol in Australia – many of the services and achievements, including the formation of APSAD, hospital drug and alcohol consultation liaison services, recommendations for injectable opioid treatment - relate back to his work from the 1960s onwards. He helped establish addiction treatment in Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto, Canada. You can read about Dr Rankin’s achievements on the University of Sydney website here, and an obituary here. Please join me in sending well wishes to Dr Rankin’s loved ones at this difficult time.
The third meeting of the AChAM Committee was held face-to-face on Friday, 1 September 2023. This meeting was the first face-to-face meeting in quite some time. It was great to see most of our Committee in person and to have such an open forum to discuss many important matters for our Chapter. Our discussions were in-depth and included three breakout sessions on the Opioid Dependence Treatment Program (ODTP) changes, curriculum renewal (for which AChAM is a part of the second wave), and vapourised nicotine with a particular focus on our patient population.
The Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol & Other Drugs (APSAD) Scientific Drug and Alcohol Conference 2023 is being held from 12 to 15 November 2023 in Adelaide. We will be holding a Chapter Update during the conference and all AChAM Fellows and trainees are invited to attend, either in person or online, to hear more about the work the Committee has been doing recently. A save the date will be sent out to you soon. If you are interested in finding out more about the conference, you can visit the APSAD website and register.
We are excited to have begun our planning for the next International Medicine in Addiction (IMiA) Conference, which the College will be hosting in Sydney in February 2025. Keep an eye out for more details, including a save the date which will be coming out early next year. Should you have any ideas of what you would like to be included in the program, please let us know by contacting the Chapter secretariat.
The AChAM Committee is planning to hold its final meeting for 2023 in late November or early December via videoconference. If you have any feedback, questions, or comments for me or the Committee, please get in touch through our secretariat at AddictionMed@racp.edu.au.
Professor Adrian Dunlop
Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine President
Expressions of Interest (EOIs)
All Expressions of Interest
RACP makes headway at parliamentary inquiry into diabetes
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are driving an increasing share of avoidable hospitalisations in Australia. The prevalence of these chronic conditions is greater in our priority patient communities, rural communities, and First Nations communities.
Health Minister, the Honourable Mark Butler, called for an inquiry into diabetes and obesity in 2022. Seizing the opportunity, the College recently made a compelling submission to the resultant Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport’s Inquiry on Diabetes. The College submission called for broad ranging reforms for preventive initiatives, including national media regulation to curb the advertising of junk food and sugary drinks advertisements to children – consistent with the RACP’s Switch Off the Junk campaign.
The submission also called for reforms to the health system, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the funding of bariatric surgeries to better support our patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity. The College received national media attention for its submission on radio and television news outlets on the back of a media release promoting the College submission.
Professor Louise Baur AM (Professor of Child and Adolescent Health, Sydney Medical School) represented the College in person in Canberra at an engaging hearing on 15 September 2023 where the RACP submission was discussed in greater detail. Throughout the hearing, the RACP stressed the need for more publicly funded secondary and tertiary obesity and diabetes clinics, bariatric surgeries, and streamlined access to novel and emergent pharmacological treatments. Further, the submission called for more integrated care models moving beyond fee-for-service to include specialists in value-based funding models. Prevention and stigma also featured as core discussion areas.
The 2023 Specialty Society webinar series is nearly complete. This year we have six specialty societies participating. Keep an eye on the ROC and the monthly Events Digest for upcoming webinars. You can also refer to the list of upcoming events at the bottom of this eBulletin.
Looking to develop your leadership and management skills?
Effective medical leadership, management, and innovation are associated with improvements in health care delivery.
For aspiring leaders, early mid-career Fellows and final year advanced trainees in the Adult Medicine Division (AMD), this workshop presents an excellent opportunity to build those skills.
Over two packed days, the workshop will cover the following topics:
- The Australian healthcare system
- Introduction to hospital finance
- Recruitment methodology and interview techniques
- The science and art of feedback
- The physician leader
There will also be time to catch up with friends and colleagues over morning teas, lunch, and a networking evening.
Register or find our more
Internal Medicine Journal
The latest issue of the Internal Medicine Journal (IMJ) is now live on the Wiley Online Library and the RACP website (log in using your RACP login credentials). Access articles tweeted on IMJ's Twitter account for free, for a limited time. The easiest way to access the IMJ is via the Wiley Online Library App, find out how you can access it.
Key highlights from the issue are:
- How Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand avoided large-scale mpox (formerly monkeypox) outbreaks in 2022–2023
- Revisiting resistant hypertension: a comprehensive review
- Narrative review of inpatient nutritional management of anorexia nervosa with management recommendations for Australian tertiary health services
- Retrospective cohort study of hypersomnias of central origin from two Australian tertiary sleep disorders services
Read the journal
Pomegranate Health podcast – Ep100: Conversations with ChatGPT
Ep100: Conversations with ChatGPT
Fellows of the College can record CPD hours for time spent listening to the podcast and reading supporting resources. Login to MyCPD, review the prefilled activity details and click ‘save’.
This is the final episode in a five-part series about artificial intelligence in medicine. We start by weighing up the costs and benefits of automation in a health system that’s increasingly pushed beyond capacity. One of the biggest time sinks for health practitioners is filling out and searching through medical records. Some of this could be performed by natural language processors which are becoming more accurate thanks to deep learning.
The power of large language models has been demonstrated by the meteoritic uptake of ChatGPT and doctors are among those who have used it to summarise literature or draft letters. But professional organisations have raised concerns around the accuracy and privacy of the model and there have also been spooky demonstrations of its capacity for common sense and theory of mind.
Guests
- Affiliate Associate Professor Paul Cooper PhD FAIDH CHIA AFHEA GAICD (Deakin University)
- Associate Professor Sandeep Reddy MBBS PhD IPFPH ECFMG CHIA FAcadTM FAIDH FCHSM SFHEA (Deakin University; Founder, MedAI)
- Professor Brent Richards MBBS FRACP JJFICM (Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service; Director, IntelliHQ)
Please visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Login to MyCPD to record listening reading as a prefilled learning activity. Subscribe to new episode email alerts or search for ‘Pomegranate Health’ in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, or any podcasting app.
Pomegranate Health podcast – Ep101: Setting the standard for workforce wellbeing
Ep101: Setting the standard for workforce wellbeing
We’ve known for a decade that about 50 per cent of doctors meet the criteria for burnout, and the figure is up to 70 per cent among trainees. Organisations have been left to come up with their own solutions to this - the result being that many simply offer band aid solutions rather than systemic ones.
Unforgiving work conditions pose a problem for both recruitment and retention of staff to the health workforce. The New Zealand Health Department, Te Whatu Ora, forecasts that within ten years, the supply of doctors, pharmacists and nurses will fall short of demand by 14 to 18 per cent. In response they have established a national Health Charter that sets the workplace standards to keep staff safe and engaged.
Australia is one step behind, but in early September 2023 there was a leadership conference aimed at developing a similar wellbeing strategy nationally. It was envisaged that there would be Chief Wellness Officers at every major health service, reporting validated metrics about their workforce to a national taskforce. As explained in the keynote presentation at the conference, at the organisational level there are different responses appropriate to the three main domains that influence staff wellbeing, including: personal resilience, professional culture, and basic administrative efficiency.
This podcast captures reflections from wellbeing champions at several different Australasian health jurisdictions.
Guests
-
Dr George Eskander MB DCH DRANZCOG FRACGP (Executive Area Director Clinical Services, North Metropolitan Health Service & Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Hospital Care Group)
- Dr Bethan Richards MB FRACP MMed MSportsMed (Head of Rheumatology, Chief Medical Wellness Officer, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Senior Clinical Lecturer, The University of Sydney)
- Dr Joanna Sinclair MB FANZCA (Senior Medical Officer Wellbeing Lead, Counties Manukau Health)
- Victoria Hirst (Chief of Knowledge Networks, General Manager of Health Roundtable, Beamtree)
- Associate Professor Anne Powell BPharm MBBS FRACP (Program Director of Physician Education, Alfred Health in Melbourne, Monash University)
- Professor Jennifer Martin MBChB MA FRACP PhD GAICD (Chair of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Newcastle, John Hunter Hospital).
Please visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Login to MyCPD to record listening reading as a prefilled learning activity. Subscribe to new episode email alerts or search for ‘Pomegranate Health’ in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, or any podcasting app.
Get involved in the RACP podcast: Pomegranate Health
The RACP podcast, Pomegranate Health, has just published its 100th episode since starting out eight years ago.
To continue to provide you with frequent and focused podcast content, we’re seeking contributions from our speciality societies, committees, and affiliated professional organisations.
Please send any questions, thoughts, or ideas of topics to podcast@racp.edu.au, including expressions of interest to present or to be interviewed on the podcast.
Share your story in our 85-year Anniversary publication
To commemorate our 85-year Anniversary, you're invited to submit your story to our 85 Year Anniversary publication. A total of 85 submissions will be curated into this keepsake publication to showcase the diverse journeys of our members and their personal connection with our College. All submissions will also be published in the College Roll.
Share your story or find out more
Updates from Evolve
The Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology Evolve top-5 recommendations
The College’s Policy & Advocacy team hosted an RACP Evolve exhibition at the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology (ANZSN) Annual Scientific Meeting from 4 to 6 September 2023 to promote the ANZSNs Evolve top-5 recommendations to reduce low value care practices. To learn more about these recommendations watch this animation.
Become an Evolve Policy & Advocacy Interest Group member
The Evolve Policy and Advocacy Interest Group (PAIG) is a flexible group of College Fellows and trainees that regularly consult to ensure that Evolve activities align with the Evolve strategy 2022 to 2026. Pleasingly, Evolve PAIG membership has increased by 6.2 per cent in the last year. If you would like to join the Evolve PAIG, please email to evolve@racp.edu.au.
To learn more about Evolve, please watch this animation.
How to be involved with Evolve
Ways to be involved:
- Get to know your specialties Top-5 recommendations
- Help us develop clinical case studies on your specialties recommendations. Check out existing Evolve case studies on the Evolve website.
- Make recommendations a routine part of clinical handovers.
- Include recommendations in education sessions like grand rounds, workshops, clinical case reviews, team meetings and more.
- Undertake a clinical audit and feedback project on a recommendation and gain CPD hours.
- Engage hospital management in implementing the recommendations across the health service.
- Discuss the recommendations with referring doctors and your multidisciplinary care team.
- Engage patients and carers in shared-decision making.
- Incorporate Evolve recommendations into electronic ordering and prescribing systems.
- Consider undertaking or supervising a research or quality improvement project based on one of the Evolve recommendations. Check out existing research on the Evolve website.
If you would like to get involved with Evolve, please email evolve@racp.edu.au for further information.
Do you know about the RACP Support Program?
It can be difficult to balance work pressures, interactions with colleagues and personal relationships. To help, we partnered with Converge International. Through the program, you can access confidential counselling, coaching and support for work and personal issues.
The RACP Support Program is a free 24/7, fully confidential and independent help line for Fellows and trainees. All RACP members receive four free sessions per year.
Make an appointment or speak directly with a Converge consultant on 1300 687 327 (Australia) or 0800 666 367 (Aotearoa New Zealand). Any information you give to Converge is completely confidential between you and your consultant.
Find out more and access support
Have you completed your ‘my work profile’?
By completing your ‘my work profile’ you will provide us with valuable insights which we can use to make evidence-based and informed advocacy decisions for improving workforce planning. All you need to do is log in to My RACP, click ‘update my work profile’ and answer a few questions about your work activities.
Complete ‘my work profile’
Mentor Match your way to success on the ROC
Mentor Match is the latest addition to an expanding line-up of services designed to support your professional development needs. It’s an innovative online tool that facilitates the establishment of mentoring relationships. It is user-driven, allowing registered Mentees to search among registered Mentors using specified criteria to find individuals whose experience and expertise match areas in which they wish to be mentored. Likewise, registered Mentors can search for and identify potential Mentees. Mentor Match is a benefit of membership and is available only to members via the RACP Online Community (ROC).
Log in to the ROC and find out more
Spring savings from your Member Advantage
Spring is here and brings with it more amazing offers and savings from your benefits program. You can save on travel, automotive, groceries and more. Log in and save with your Member Advantage.
Available online, 24/7. That's your Member Advantage.
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