Welcome to 2009, AMA members

A special welcome to all of our new members, most of whom are just setting out on their careers as doctors.  These new doctors were welcomed at two functions held at AMA House in January, and in addition our industrial staff have visited all hospitals to speak to interns in their first weeks on the job.

We hope that members who join in their first year after graduation will stay with us throughout their career, and with this objective in mind we continue to strive to increase the range and depth of services we offer our members.

We also plan to continue our constant work of lobbying on behalf of doctors and their patients. This is a time when the doctor shortage is being used as an excuse to downgrade the level of service offered to patients, with proposals to have nurse practitioners and even pharmacists diagnose and prescribe for patients.

In hospitals, doctors increasingly report their frustrations at being excluded from decision-making or being driven by KPIs which have been set without regard to patient care implications.  (We hope the situation within hospitals will improve, following Minister Andrews’ commitment to addressing a number of recommendations of the 2008 Ministerial Review, including the need to involve doctors in decision-making at the highest levels.)

The AMA’s reactions to attacks on the professionalism and professional autonomy of doctors are inevitably greeted with comments along the lines of “predictably, the ‘doctors’ lobby’ opposes the use of nurse practitioners” etc.  Yes it is predictable, but not for the reason implied—doctors are protecting their patients, not protecting their ‘patch’. 

And the patients themselves are aware of the potential for the standard of their care to be compromised. Conduct a straw poll at the next social gathering you attend and see how many of your acquaintance would be happy to consult a nurse rather than a doctor.  Due respect to Minister Roxon, who has a healthcare budget to oversee, she might find the public has a better sense of what’s best for them than she imagines.

In these troubled times the AMA endeavours to be there to support all our members, on a global or individual basis.  At AMA Victoria we will be striving, despite the economic situation, to expand and improve our services.

With an expectation that we will finalise arrangements for our Enterprise Bargain, our emphasis in 2009 and beyond will be on compliance, and extra personnel will be deployed to ensure that hospitals comply with the provisions of agreements reached.

In 2009 we will continue our Peer Support Service, which has proved very successful in its role of supporting individual doctors with personal troubles.  We have plans to extend the service to provide support and assistance to doctors under investigation or who are the subject of litigation.

Our commercial and training services will be expanded, after the successful launch in 2008 of mpstaff, our medical practice staff recruitment service.  We also began work on our practice consultancy, and a launch of the full suite of services will occur early in 2009. 

Our training activities will continue to expand, building on the success of our AMA4 Guide impairment assessment training programs.

We hope that whatever your professional or business needs are, you will come to the AMA for help. Please ask, and please tell us what you want from us!

Very best wishes for a healthy and happy 2009.

Jane Stephens
Chief Executive Officer, AMA Victoria