Rural Generalism must be recognised as the specialist qualification it is.

Rural hospitals and health systems rely on Rural Generalists to provide advanced, broad-scope care, while not always recognising that skill set appropriately in classification, remuneration or workforce structures.

Ramya advocated through WA Health’s Rural Generalist Classification Review process to help address this gap and ensure Rural Generalists were properly recognised for the breadth, complexity and value of their work. This was not simply an administrative change. It was about fairness, respect and workforce sustainability.

Rural Generalists provide primary care, emergency care, inpatient care, procedural care and advanced skills in communities where access to other specialists is often limited. Their work keeps rural hospitals functioning and communities connected to care close to home.

Ramya’s advocacy helped ensure Rural Generalists were valued not just as a workforce solution, but as highly trained specialist GPs delivering essential care across rural hospitals, general practice and the wider health system.

Ramya played a key advocacy role in securing a funding reprieve for the Albany After Hours GP Clinic, following strong community and RACGP WA advocacy.

(link: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/wa-after-hours-clinic-gets-funding-reprieve)

The clinic provides timely after-hours care for the Albany community while easing pressure on the local emergency department. Importantly, it keeps urgent care connected to general practice, with consultation summaries sent back to patients’ regular GPs to support continuity and reduce fragmentation.

During a regional WA visit, Ramya and RACGP leadership met with local GPs and the Member for Albany to raise concerns about the clinic’s future. She continued to advocate after returning to Perth, helping ensure the community’s needs were heard. The funding reprieve was a welcome win for patients, local GPs and the broader Albany health system. But Ramya has also been clear that short-term funding cycles are not enough. Rural and regional communities need long-term certainty to plan workforce, infrastructure and service delivery.

This advocacy reflects Ramya’s broader position: after-hours and urgent care should strengthen general practice, not bypass it.

Ramya knows rural general practice cannot be strengthened from a distance. It requires listening, presence and practical action.

She has actively built stronger working relationships with Rural Clinical School WA and Rural Health West, two organisations central to WA’s rural GP pipeline, to better connect College advocacy with the realities facing rural doctors, supervisors, students and communities.

Through this work, Ramya has helped strengthen the focus on rural training pathways, workforce planning, supervision support, practice sustainability and the conditions needed to attract and retain doctors in rural and remote WA.

With Rural Clinical School WA training students across a 15-site rural network, and Rural Health West data recording 1,067 GPs working across rural and remote WA, these partnerships are critical to building a stronger, more sustainable rural workforce.

Ramya’s advocacy has been focused on turning relationships into outcomes: better support for rural supervisors, stronger pathways for students and registrars, greater recognition of rural practice, and a clearer voice for rural GPs in workforce reform.