AFOEM eBulletin - 23 September 2024
As you are probably aware, the Board has cancelled Congress for 2025. AFOEM Council met on 12 September and considered the implications of this decision on the Ferguson-Glass Oration, the Ramazzini presentations and the Annual Training Meeting. Traditionally, these have usually been held in conjunction with Congress as this has provided the most cost-effective and efficient use of members’ time and expenses. Council proposed to discuss with ANZSOM about holding a conjoint meeting that is already scheduled to be held in Melbourne in October 2025. This is preliminary advice only, and there will need to be a lot of planning to determine how AFOEM and ANZSOM’s requirements can both be accommodated and implemented effectively. Council acknowledged that this timing is not ideal for trainees seeking pre-examination preparation or wishing to complete their research requirements. Sadly, the Ferguson-Glass Oration will be cancelled for 2025.
Council also considered the feedback from the Education Committee on recommended changes to the revised AFOEM curriculum. Most changes were accepted, so Council has now endorsed the revised curriculum. Following formal College approval, implementation planning will commence. Trainees already in the training program will continue with the current curriculum.
Apart from the removal of Stage A, the proposal includes an entry requirement for a post-graduate diploma in occupational medicine, and at least a year of experience in a predominantly occupational medicine role. These changes are expected to improve the knowledge base of those entering training, improving the success rate of training, and allowing supervisors to focus on assisting trainees in how to apply their knowledge more effectively to address workplace issues.
More than 40 Fellows have responded to the email to be listed on our 'Find an Expert' directory on the AFOEM webpage. If you have not yet responded and would like to be listed, please provide your updated details to afoem@racp.edu.au .
There is still a vacancy for the Chair of Health Benefits of Good Work®. This needs to be filled urgently as we are hoping to hold a forum in Sydney on Monday, 25 November.
Finally, I look forward to catching up with those members attending the ANZSOM Annual Scientific Meeting in Perth from 20 to 23 October. This should be a memorable event, especially as the conference dinner will be celebrating occupational medicine’s 40 years as a speciality.
Dr Warren Harrex
AFOEM President
If you know someone deserving of recognition for their outstanding contributions and achievements, now is the time to nominate them for these prestigious College awards:
- The John Sands Medal recognises a Fellow who makes a significant contribution to the welfare of the RACP and its members.
- The College Medal is aligned to the College motto hominum servire saluti. It is awarded to a Fellow who makes a significant contribution to medical specialist practice, healthcare and/or health of community through physician activities.
- RACP International Medal recognises a member who has provided outstanding service in developing countries.
- RACP Medal for Clinical Service in Rural and Remote Areas recognises a Fellow who has provided outstanding clinical service in rural and remote areas of Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand.
- RACP Mentor of the Year Award recognises a Fellow who has made an outstanding contribution to mentoring or provided a high level of support and guidance throughout training.
- RACP Trainee of the Year Award recognises a trainee who has made an outstanding contribution to the College, community and trainee activities.
Nominations close on Monday, 30 September 2024.
Find out more or email foundation@racp.edu.au for more information.
Nominate a colleague to recognise their outstanding contributions to the Faculty in one of the following areas:
- Education, training and assessment
- Policy and advocacy
- Trainee commitment
Nominations open Tuesday, 1 October 2024. See the website for more details and to nominate.
The Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine is proud to offer the Indigenous Australian and Māori Health Scholarship for Occupational and Environmental Medicine as part of the RACP Indigenous Health Scholarship Program for 2025.
The Program aims to support those medical graduates and current trainees of the RACP who identify as Aboriginal, Torres Strait islander or Māori on their chosen career path to becoming a physician.
Several scholarships are available for 2025 including:
- College Indigenous Australian and Māori Health Scholarship
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Scholarship
Applications open Tuesday, 1 October 2024. Further details on these scholarships are available on the RACP Foundation website.
The AFOEM Essay Prize is open to medical students or interns in their first year after graduation. The prize is awarded for demonstrated excellence through essay, research project or assignment on occupational or environmental health.
See the webpage for further details. Applications close Thursday, 31 October 2024.
The Department of Health and Aged Care (DOHAC) is seeking volunteers to assist in testing a feature in the physician portal in the National Occupational Respiratory Disease Registry (National Registry). This feature is an interactive report that includes summarised statistics developed from data collected in the National Registry that will be viewable to all physician profiles.
It will be seeking feedback on:
- the look and feel of the reports
- how easy the reports are to navigate
- the relevance of information presented in the reports.
It is expected that user testing will take no more than 30 minutes per person. Participants are welcome to request a longer timeslot if they wish to provide more extensive feedback.
User testing will take place between 1 October 2024 and 31 October 2024. Times and dates are flexible depending on your availability.
Please contact racpconsult@racp.edu.au if you are interested in participating by Sunday, 22 September 2024.
Help Desk
The Help Desk is currently open from 9am to 5pm (AEST) on weekdays with staff available during these times to answer calls and respond to emails. In the first 80 days of operation (since 22 May), there have been 33 enquiries.
The Department of Health and Aged Care is now considering a timely call back (and email) service due to the modest demand noting that it may not be necessary to provide the current arrangement which was initially designed to service a higher level of demand and urgent response times.
Making a notification video
A YouTube video has been developed to assist notifying physicians and their agents with Making a notification to the National Occupational Respiratory Disease Registry.
Recent NSW Government legislative reform changes notifying obligations for New South Wales physicians
A reform has been enacted to ensure NSW physicians are no longer required to notify diagnoses of silicosis to both NSW Health and the National Registry, effective 3 September 2024. The NSW Public Health Act 2010 amendment can be accessed here.
The Department of Health and Aged Care website has been updated with the following message for NSW physicians: Occupational respiratory diseases | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.
WorkSafe is seeking to recruit suitably qualified specialists to join its panel of Independent Medical Examiners (IMEs).
The role of an IME is to review an injured worker and provide an evidenced based report on their injury and treatment. The IME opinion informs claims decisions to enable the worker’s recovery and return to work.
We are recruiting for a number of disciplines including Occupational Physicians. If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply here. Applications close Sunday, 6 October 2024.
For all enquiries, please email IME_recruitment@worksafe.vic.gov.au
ANZSOM is pleased to announce a number of upcoming events and welcomes AFOEM Fellows and trainees to make the most of these learning and networking opportunities.
South Australia/Northern Territory Branch Meeting, Monday, 23 September 5.30pm, 400 William Street, Adelaide
ANZSOM has a strong partnership with ReturnToWorkSA, with annual meetings providing an excellent opportunity for information sharing and clinical discussion.
- There will be a scheme update from CEO Michael Francis
- Simon Hynes - Project Manager IAAS will deliver an update about the Impairment Assessor Accreditation Scheme Review
- James Large - Executive Leader Regulation and Rob Byrne - Service Leader Technical Service and Operations will be attending to answer questions from the audience.
Light refreshments will be served.Register here at no cost.
ANZSOM QLD Branch educational meeting, 26 September 2024 – in-person or online.
Join us at the offices of Phoenix Occupational Medicine, as Dr Brett Shannon presents his research into the hazards confronting rideshare drivers in their work. Currently based in Chicago as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Chicago, Brett will join us online while we take the opportunity to network with colleagues.
In-person attendance
Date: Thursday, 26 September 2024
Time: 6pm (finger food and drinks), 6.30pm (presentation)
Venue: 16/100 Edwards Street, Brisbane (Phoenix Occupational Medicine office)
Cost: $40pp (includes refreshments)
Register here
Online attendance
Time: 6.30pm
Cost: No charge for ANZSOM/AFOEM members.
Register here
ANZSOM is counting down the weeks to its major educational event from 20 to 23 October 2024 in Perth.
The ASM Committee, led by Dr Miguel Kabilio, has put together an exceptional program, with three full days of educational content addressing key issues and emerging topics in occupational medicine.
Topics include: burnout, obesity, diabetes, dust diseases, sleep apnea, plus so much more.
Find out more, view the program, or register at www.anzsomasm2024.com.au
Not an ANZSOM member?
Click here to join ANZSOM
Click here to subscribe to ANZSOM news
On Thursday, 17 October 2024, we’re hosting a special online event where Chief Wellness Officers (CWOs) examine the importance of investing in the health and wellbeing of healthcare professionals.
We will delve into the roles and responsibilities of CWOs and discuss the significance of having paid and supported positions in this field.
Gain valuable insights into effective wellness practices, hear inspiring stories including the challenges faced along the way, and see the positive results that can be achieved.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Find out more or register
You’ve told us that you need your College to be more responsive and supportive. We’ve listened to your feedback and we’re establishing a new Member Support Centre to help you navigate your College, improve enquiry response and resolution times and better support your needs. Thank you for your feedback – it helps us improve
The Medicines Advice Initiative Australia (MAIA) consortium, in collaboration with the Council of Australian Therapeutic Advisory Groups (CATAG), has released a new toolkit titled "Medicines and the Kidney," aimed at improving medicine use and patient care in Australia. This resource provides essential tools and guidance for healthcare professionals to address dosage adjustments in patients with reduced kidney function.
The toolkit includes:
- Practice Tool: Offers resources for Medicines and Therapeutics Advisory Committees to support local stewardship on medicine dosage adjustments and effective patient education during discharge.
- Teaching Tool: A clinical scenario for educators to demonstrate safe dosage adjustments for those with reduced kidney function and educate patients about their condition.
Key points for health services:
- Anticipate dosage adjustments for patients with reduced kidney function when prescribing.
- Educate patients and carers on the diagnosis and potential need for medicine adjustments.
- Ensure accurate discharge summaries for patients whose kidney function has declined during hospitalisation.
- Medicines and Therapeutics Advisory Committees, supported by CATAG, should implement local protocols for kidney function estimation, medicine dosage adjustments, and communication standards during transitions of care.
If you would like further information about the toolkit, please don’t hesitate to contact CATAG Project Officer, Mrs Jennifer Nolan at catag.qum1@outlook.com.
SRSA helps rural specialists stay skilled and engaged so they can provide the best care to their communities.
Eligible applicants are invited to apply for a grant of up to $12,000 to complete CPD activities like conferences, workshops, clinical attachments, and peer review.
The application deadline is 15 October 2024.
Visit the SRSA website for more information and to submit an application:
Eligibility
To apply for an SRSA grant, you must work rurally (Modified Monash Model categories 2-7) as either:
- A (non-GP) specialist
- An Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander specialist trainee
- A specialist international medical graduate under assessment
If you received a grant in our previous funding round (Funding Round 8), you are noteligible to apply in this round. If you were unsuccessful in the past, we encourage you to apply again.
SRSA is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care and managed by the Council of Presidents of Medical Colleges.
Dr Karan Singh loves his job as a registrar in nuclear medicine but he thinks there isn’t enough exposure
to the specialty during medical school and basic training. In this podcast we spend a day in his department at Prince of Wales Hospital Sydney and get a taste of the many different referrals that come his way; a bone scan for a young man experiencing leg spasms after recovering from a car crash; myocardial perfusion imaging for an elderly gentleman with coronary artery disease; staging for prostate and breast cancer; and radiation therapy for a toxic multinodular goiter. The “reality audio” format gives a good sense of the daily tasks and responsibilities involved in this career pathway.
Credits:
- Dr Karan Singh
- Staff and patients at Prince of Wales Nuclear Medicine and PET Department
Please visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Login to MyCPD to record listening and 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.
The RACP podcast, Pomegranate Health, has published over 100 episodes since starting out eight years ago.
To provide more frequent and focused content we’re seeking contributions from our speciality societies, committees and affiliated professional organisations.
To hear what this would sound like, listen to the episodes tagged [IMJ On-Air]
These episodes feature authors published in the Internal Medicine Journal being interviewed by the relevant section editor.
They have covered themes as varied as asthma management, hospital-acquired complications, causes of readmission and the JEV outbreak.
You already spend considerable time preparing lectures and webinars for your colleagues.
Audio podcasts provide an easy way to reach thousands more around the world.
Each episode gets downloaded around 6500 times over the first 12 months from publication, with 21 per cent of listeners located outside of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
All you need to do is to organise one or more presenters and an interviewer familiar with the material. The podcast producer will coordinate an online recording lasting about one hour and then edit it down before publication. The intention would be to ‘brand’ regular episodes from your specialty society or organisation in the same way that we’ve done with [IMJ On-Air].
Please send any questions or ideas to podcast@racp.edu.au
By completing your ‘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 your ‘work profile’
Save on all your favourite lifestyle and service brands from leading retailers across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand – with RACP Benefits. Our lifestyle benefits portal offers you exclusive discounts and genuine savings on items in a range of popular categories. To celebrate the launch of RACP Benefits, we have some great offers for you to explore.
So log in today and take advantage of your RACP Benefits
The RACP is seeking your feedback on gaps and opportunities for improvement in the College Learning Series (CLS). We also need your help to identify exemplar lectures. Tell us which CLS lecture/s you liked and why. Your feedback will help future presenters deliver high quality, engaging lectures that meet your needs and expectations.
Did you know that you can now update your address details online? Simply log in to MyRACP and go to 'Edit my details'.
The Australian Medical Council (AMC) is currently seeking Expressions of Interest for the following positions on AMC committees:
- Health Consumer members (two positions available), Specialist Education Accreditation Committee
- Health Consumer member, Progress Monitoring Sub Committee
- Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander member, Recognition of Medical Specialties Sub Committee
Visit the RACP website to view more Expressions of Interest
AFOEM contact details
AFOEM Faculty enquiries (including Council and committees):
Jane Konjevic
AFOEM Executive Officer
Email: afoem@racp.edu.au
Aotearoa NZ AFOEM office:
Email: AoNZ_AFRM@racp.org.nz
AFOEM Education and Training enquiries:
Education Officer
Email: occenvmed@racp.edu.au
AFOEM Examination enquiries:
Examination Coordinator, Assessment and Selection Unit
Email: examinations@racp.edu.au
AFOEM training site accreditation enquiries:
Site Accreditation Unit
Email: accreditation@racp.edu.au
AFOEM CPD enquiries:
Email: mycpd@racp.edu.au