Update from the Department of General Practice

Welcomes and Farewells

As forecast in our last newsletter we are fortunate to have two superb professional staff members managing the business of the Department into the future. Vicki Bradley works Monday to Thursday and Sharon Lawrence covers Tuesday to Friday. It is great to have our full complement of professional staff on board!

Though we missed out on a GP Synergy Academic Registrar this year, when Jessica Bedford put up her hand to join our Department we were glad to welcome her to a part time registrar appointment for the second half of this year. We are grateful for the University support for this position. Meanwhile Emma Busby is a keen new recruit assisting us with our research and also with this newsletter.

Awards

Penny Abbott has been awarded a 2018 Churchill Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. The 6 week fellowship will support Penny’s travel to the United States and Canada in 2019 to research health care accessibility for people in contact with the criminal justice system. As Penny notes “Most people in prison actually have short sentences, often cycling between prison and the community due to offending which is strongly related to their health issues, particularly mental health problems and addictions. This means as GPs we can do something about that, by engaging people in health care to help break the cycle”.

Penny will be looking into programs giving medical students experience in interacting with people in prison.

Congratulations Penny and we look forward to you bringing back what you have learnt to WSU!

Conferences and presentations

The second half of the year is always the high time for conferences and we were represented by Jenny at GP 18 where she delivered a paper on Patient Centred Medical Homes in Western Sydney. David Cosgriff (2017 WSU registrar) presented his research on what influences patients with chronic disease to visit multiple GPs and Alison Lyon (our other 2017 registrar) presented her findings in relation to  Assyrian Refugee understandings about cervical cancer screening.  We were thrilled to hear one of our talented GP supervisors presenting and to have the 2018 Nick Collins Award student attending – read on to find out who they were!

Jenny also attended the Primary Health Care Research Conference in August, presenting the findings of research with “GPs at the Deep End” in western Sydney.

Town and Gown Gala Dinner

In October Jenny was honoured to be invited as a guest of our Dean to the University’s 2018 Town & Gown Gala Dinner. This event celebrated and supported the University’s impactful health and medical research program.  Jenny shared a table with many of our talented alumni and with School of Medicine benefactor Dr Peter Brennan (AM).