Back Every GP: Make General Practice a Career Doctors Choose and Stay In

Backing every GP is not a new priority for me

As a GP, practice owner, educator, employer of registrars and through my work with Joint Colleges Training Services, I have seen our workforce challenges from different sides. General practice is deeply rewarding, but the system around it is becoming harder to sustain.

The RACGP’s Health of the Nation 2025 found that 71% of GPs remain satisfied with their job, yet only 47% would recommend general practice as a career to future doctors, and 63% are considering reducing their time in practice.

That tells us our challenge is not simply recruiting more doctors. It is making general practice a career people want to choose, can sustain and want to remain in.

GPs are managing greater complexity, absorbing more unfunded work and navigating more administration. Supervisors are training the next generation while running practices. Doctors entering general practice can still find the transition from hospital training harder than it needs to be.

Make general practice worth choosing

The 2025 National Registrar Survey gives us something important to build on: around 92% of registrars were satisfied with their overall training and education experience, and 95% expected to be working as a private GP or Rural Generalist in five years.

Good training shows doctors the value of the career. We need to make the conditions surrounding it just as compelling.

Choosing general practice should not mean stepping backwards in employment conditions or career certainty. I will fight for fairer conditions and less unnecessary bureaucracy.

I support reforms such as Single Employer Model arrangements where they improve security and portability for registrars, but they must preserve the flexibility and autonomy that make community general practice work both for the GPiT and practices. We need to make choosing general practice easier without making practising general practice harder.

For international medical graduates, that same principle means  with clearer, fairer pathways and appropriate supervision and mentoring.

Back the people who build our workforce

Every GPiT depends on supervisors and training practices willing and able to teach them. Supervision brings teaching, mentoring, clinical oversight and considerable responsibility, usually while supervisors continue caring for patients and running practices.

If we want to expand training capacity, supervisors cannot be an afterthought. I will push for proper recognition, practical support and training systems designed around how general practice actually operates.

For rural, remote and regional communities, workforce policy must focus on retention as much as recruitment. Housing, family needs, professional support and practice sustainability all influence whether a doctor builds a lasting career in a community. I strongly support Rural Generalism as a distinct pathway alongside locally designed solutions that help doctors stay.

We also need to back experienced GPs. Health of the Nation found 77% are dissatisfied with the amount of administration associated with their work. Retaining skilled clinicians means reducing unnecessary burden and making it easier for them to keep practising, supervising and leading.

I have already been working on this

Through my role both the College and the University of Notre Dame, I work directly at the intersection of training, supervision and general practice delivery. It has reinforced how quickly well-intentioned policy can fail when it does not reflect what happens inside a general practice.

I have also brought together leaders from UWA, the University of Notre Dame and Curtin University through think-tank discussions focused on making general practice a career medical students actively want to choose.

Only 9.4% of medical students identified general practice as their preferred specialty in 2024, down from 13% in 2022.

Our discussions have focused on lifting the visibility and prestige of general practice, improving student experiences and placements, supporting supervisors and reducing barriers that discourage practices from teaching. Career choices are shaped long before a doctor submits a GP training application, so we need to influence the journey from medical school through training and into practice.

What I will do as President

As President, I will turn this into a focused national workforce agenda: fairer GPiT conditions, stronger support for supervisors and training practices, calling for funding and support FSP and PEP pathways for our IMG colleagues, and practical measures that improve retention across a GP’s career.

I will take those priorities into government decision-making early, work with universities and stakeholders before problems become entrenched, and use the College’s national reach to bring evidence and frontline experience to the same table.

I will judge progress by outcomes: whether more students choose general practice, whether registrars remain positive about their careers, whether supervisors keep teaching and are supported, and whether experienced GPs choose to stay.

For too long, the GP workforce has been treated largely as a numbers problem. It is a career problem too.

As President, I will fight to make general practice a profession doctors actively choose, supervisors are properly supported to teach in, and experienced GPs want to remain in. That is what backing every GP means.