GP pleads with WA Premier over RACGP exams

More than 110 doctors have signed a petition to Mark McGowan asking for an exemption for fellowship examinees on Friday, despite the city-wide lockdown.

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A Perth GP is lobbying the state government to allow 69 doctors to leave their homes this Friday to complete their Key Feature Problem fellowship exam, despite communication from the RACGP that no exemptions would be made for candidates.

Dr Hemant Garg, who became an RACGP fellow in 2019, said he remembers the stress that exam candidates are put under in the days preceding the KFP and Applied Knowledge Test.

In an open letter sent to WA Premier Mark McGowan on Monday afternoon, Dr Garg pleaded for an exemption to allow candidates enrolled to sit the RACGP’s fellowship exams in Perth and Bunbury to attend testing centres, despite the state’s stay-at-home order.

“I am appealing to you to seek urgent action to grant an exemption, as well as any assistance to the RACGP to arrange these exams to run in WA,” he wrote.

“It would be a gross injustice to all of our valued general practice doctors in training, if after all this time, effort and financial cost to themselves, they are simply told they can’t do this exam.”

Dr Garg said that given these written exams are for doctors, the WA government should trust them to set up a COVID-safe exam environment – including mandating the appropriate use of masks and enforcing social distancing.

And while he is still waiting for a response from Mr McGowan’s office, more than 110 doctors have shown their support for his cause, signing a petition in support of his letter.

TMR understands that the venues the RACGP originally reserved to run the KFP on Friday 5 February and the AKT following day on Saturday 6 February, are required to keep their facilities closed under the lockdown orders.

Dr Garg has contacted the RACGP since the announcement of the lockdown, suggesting other venues could still be booked before Friday that might be better suited for conducting a COVID-safe exam.

“I would also be happy to help out and certainly if we put the call out to GPs and RACGP fellows in Perth I’m sure we’d get more of them on board as well to help,” he told TMR.

However, Dr Garg’s valiant efforts to enable exam access for all enrolled candidates this weekend – half a dozen of whom were affected by the 2020 remote exam fiasco – seems to be taking on the advocacy role members would expect of the RACGP in this crisis.

Dr Garg said if the RACGP had learned from its mismanagement of the online fellowship exams in 2020, which led to the cancellation of the 2020.2 AKT and KFP, there would be more than one option on the table for the WA candidates.  

“It’s not fair in this day and age to have failure like that and to learn nothing from it – in fact, it seems the lesson they’ve taken is to just go back to pen and paper instead of fixing their IT and getting it running, and making sure it will work this time,” he said.

TMR asked the RACGP about the lack of contingency planning for the upcoming KFP and AKT, and whether the College was in breach of its contract for failing to mitigate foreseeable risk, but it did not respond before publication.

It’s also still unclear who in the RACGP is really to blame for what seems like continuing problems in its fellowship exam delivery.

After the major technical issues which led to the cancellation of the 2020.2 KFP and AKT in October last year, it was the College’s then acting president, Dr Ayman Shenouda who claimed all responsibility.

In January the RACGP announced that its general manager of education services, Dr Genevieve Yates, had resigned from her role in overseeing fellowship examinations.

Dr Yates’ resignation will come into effect later this month, just over one year since she took on the role in January 2020.

“In her short – but productive – time in the role, Genevieve led the teams that were forced to pivot to remote exam delivery amid the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the safety of candidates and all others involved,” the RACGP said in a statement on its website.

“Keen to get back to education and clinical practice, Genevieve will resume education roles with organisations including the Black Dog Institute and MDA National, and undertake part-time clinical work to maintain recency of practice with AHPRA.”

The RACGP said it was advertising the general manager education services role externally and would fill the position with internal talent while it completed the recruitment process.