Dr. Andrew Baird

Name: Dr. Andrew Baird

Career stage: Consultant

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Medical Specialty: General Practice

What do you enjoy most about general practice?

The variety and diversity and the contact with other people.

What are the challenges of general practice?

• Time management
• Dealing with undifferentiated presentations such as symptoms that dont fit the text books
• Being able to identify and address patient concerns and anxieties
• Being unable to change intractable problems such as interpersonal relationships, socioeconomic conditions and illness behaviours, meaning stoicism versus fragility, the range of an individual's resilience
• Dealing with uncertainty
• Being ok saying I don't know
• fear of litigation (especially in urban practice unfortunately, although much less of a concern in rural practice)

What are some of the things that helped you decide on a training program?

Working in hospital medicine. This didn't fit with the way I wanted to practice. Hospital medicine is disease focused whereas I wished to focus on people medicine.

General practice also provides diversity. It can be enjoyable having contact with people and building a relationship.

I trained in a semirural area and preferred to be in a country area. This gives me the opportunity to do more procedural work. i did the equivalent of the RACGP training program in the UK. I then had to sit the RACGP exams here. Although the practical work RPL ( recognition of prior learning) meant that I did not have to be a supervised GP registrar again.

During the obstetrics part of my GP training I met my wife who was a mid wife. She was a Melbourne girl and this lead me to Australia. I wished to practice rural medicine for the opportunities to practice procedural medicine.In the UK to do this I would have needed to go to the highlands of Scotland. My wife wasn't keen to do this so she lead me to Australia.

Do you have any advice for young or aspiring GPs?

GO COUNTRY- for breadth of experience, challenge and getting a real sense of belonging to a community and being valued for it.I enjoyed doing the obstetrics and anesthetics . This added an extra dimension. But be aware of time management issues as work can be intoxicating and you can lose focus on other areas of your life.

GIVE TEACHING A GO

Be willing to 'call a friend' (other GP, or specialist, or Emergency Department) if you're unsure about how to deal with a patient. Don't take the problem home with you to sleep on it. You'll just worry it out of proportion.

Allow time for family, recreation and self. This is more important than work for most of us I reckon, although work can be very seductive.

We're not indispensible. Get a GP of your own.

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