The never ending road: improving, adapting and refining a needs-based model to estimate future general practitioner requirements in two Australian states.

Background: Health workforce planning models have been developed to estimate the future health workforce requirements for a population whom they serve and have been used to inform policy decisions.

Objectives: To adapt and further develop a need-based GP workforce simulation model to incorporate current and estimated geographic distribution of patients and GPs.

Methods: A need-based simulation model that estimates the supply of GPs and levels of services required in South Australia (SA) was adapted and applied to the Western Australian (WA) workforce.

Assessment of diagnostic skills in specialist examinations should include lessons learnt from misdiagnosis.

Background: Poor authenticity in high stake clinical exams adversely effects validity. We propose including known misleading diagnostic factors and contextual biases in the assessment of diagnostic skills amongst advanced specialty trainees. We hypothesise that this strategy offers a more realistic and critical assessment of diagnostic skill than strategies in which candidates are presented with directive, bias free information, allowing for assumptions which cannot be made in real life.

Promoting clinical reasoning in general practice trainees: role of the clinical teacher.

Background: Clinical reasoning requires knowledge, cognition and metacognition, and is contextually bound. Clinical teachers can and should play a key role in explicitly promoting clinical reasoning.

Context: The aim of this article is to relate the clinical reasoning literature to the general practice or family medicine context, and to provide clinical teachers with strategies to promote clinical reasoning.

Lessons from the past--historical trends in the RACGP examination.

Assessment within any medical specialty college is often an area that elicits deep feelings within the medical community. The speciality of general practice is no exception, and there are a number of deeply held and widespread beliefs about The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Fellowship examination. This article seeks to publish historical data from past RACGP Fellowship examinations.

Competence and the quality framework.

Background: The quality framework developed by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is described by Booth in this issue of Australian Family Physician. This article applies the framework to the 'competence' domain.

Objective: This article explores the key role of competence in the delivery of quality health care.

The RACGP Examination--changes from 1999-2004.

Promoting and maintaining the quality and standards of Australian general practice on behalf of the profession and the Australian community is The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' central activity. An important part of this process is assessment of doctors wishing to attain Fellowship of the RACGP. For general practice registrars, the summative assessment process is the college examination.

Practice based assessment.

Background: Practice based assessment (PBA) was designed to suit the needs of doctors eligible to sit The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Fellowship (FRACGP) exam via the practice eligible route. A pilot program of the PBA was undertaken in 2000. As a result of recommendations by candidates and examiners and ongoing literature review, a number of changes have been made, but the basic structure of the assessment process remains.

Rural secondary school students living in a small community: their attitudes, beliefs and perceptions towards general practice.

Objective: To study the attitudes and beliefs towards general practice of rural secondary school students, in particular, their perception of the barriers to the effective delivery of primary health care.

Setting: Students attending a government-funded secondary school in a rural community of less than 4000 people.

Subjects: 250 students in years 7-12 were surveyed, with 177 (71%) replying, 45% of these being male.