GPs will hit the sporting capital of the world for their biennial addiction medicine conference.
The RACGP will hold the 2024 General Practice in Addiction (GPADD) conference at the Pullman Albert Park in Melbourne this Saturday, 27 July.
The event will be hosted by the RACGP Victoria Alcohol and Other Drugs committee and convened by Dr Anne Saunders, chair of the RACGP Victoria AOD committee, and Dr Paul Grinzi, a GP medical educator for the RACGP’s AOD GP education program.
The theme for the 2024 event is “Vulnerable Populations”. The program has a strong focus on treating patient groups affected by extra challenges that may impact substance use – the LGBTQI+ community, refugees and asylum seekers, homeless populations and people in custody.
Dr Grinzi told The Medical Republic the idea of focusing on vulnerable populations had been identified several years ago, but that previous attempts to execute it had been impacted by the covid pandemic.
“We realised there are universal populations we’re seeing regularly that are supposed to fall under the umbrella of being more vulnerable, [despite there being] some individuals that wouldn’t necessarily classify themselves as vulnerable,” Dr Grinzi said.
“But there are populations that we serve that certainly have added layers of complexity [to deal with] when we’re looking at alcohol and other drug use in the community. These layers need to be addressed, so we thought we’d put together a conference that would allow us to explore [them].”
The conference will feature a special session on identifying and preventing burnout and compassion fatigue among healthcare workers, presented by psychologist Shawn Goldberg and GP Dr Aadhil Aziz.
“We don’t often get to share our experiences around the energy you need to put in place to help these people. [This area] is very much a slow burn, because a lot of these issues take time to evolve, but also to recover from,” said Dr Grinzi.
“The advantage of a conference is the ability to talk amongst ourselves, to share ideas and feel like we’re actually a community working together, even though we’re working individually.”
There will be plenary sessions discussing the interconnected nature of trauma, mental health and addiction, as well as how stigma affects patients with substance use disorders.
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The plenary sessions will be complemented by a keynote address from Jane Dicka, coordinator of the health promotion team at Harm Reduction Victoria, focusing on the lived experience of stigma. Jane has experienced various forms of addiction in her own life and worked with, and advocated for, people who use drugs for over 20 years.
“One of the problems with stigma is [that] it’s often unspoken, it’s sort of a silent elephant in the room. This conference allows us to have someone with lived experience and expertise talking to us about how to navigate it so we can make it work,” Dr Grinzi explained.
“If we can decrease the amount of stigma and the emotional barriers [for certain vulnerable populations], then we can provide better care. That’s the bottom line here – to improve the care for our communities.”
More information about the conference is available online.
