Rural Hospital Requirements

There are specific requirements that apply to registrars who work at rural hospitals with Emergency Department (ED) responsibilities.

• Practices are not to roster the registrar on call for ED during the first two weeks of their rural term

• Hunter New England Health, in conjunction with Valley to Coast, will run a Rural Orientation & Emergency Workshop for all registrars starting their first rural term with ED responsibilities. This will usually be held in the second week of term. The workshop will include an orientation to Hunter New England Health and sessions to up-skill in Emergency Medicine.

• In addition to this, registrars will require an orientation to the specific hospital where they will be working.

• GP supervisors are requested to make an assessment of their registrar’s Emergency Medicine knowledge by going through some clinical case scenarios with the registrar (these are provided to the supervisor at the start of each term).

• GP supervisors are then requested to develop a set of clear written guidelines as to when the registrar must phone them (suggested guidelines are provided to the supervisor with the clinical case scenarios).

• The arrangements for supervision after hours must be clearly explained to the registrar so that they know who to call and how to contact them.

• If the GP supervisor is delegating the supervision to another doctor, these arrangements must be made clear to the registrar

As a prerequisite to working at a rural hospital, each registrar will need to sign a VMO contract and VMO Liability contract with the Area Health Service and comply with any credentialing requirements.

Any hospital site that registrars will work at must be noted on the form when applying for accreditation as a teaching practice so that the hospital work is recognised as part of the GP term.