Why do geriatricians need a working with children check?
AMA Victoria is on a mission to “Get Rid of Stupid Stuff” at the state’s public hospitals, and duplicative mandatory training tasks are the first item on its agenda.
The GROSS initiative, which launched in Hawaii, looks to identify and eliminate inefficiencies and redirect resources to frontline care.
“It’s a bottom-up approach where clinicians can actually nominate the problems [that frustrate them],” AMAV president Dr Jill Tomlinson told The Medical Republic.
“Geriatricians needing to have a working with children check when working with children is not their scope of practice, not what they wish to do, not what they intend to do and [likely something] that they never do, it just seems like stupid stuff.”
AMAV’s petition to Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has garnered around 650 signatures at time of writing, and the association also has an open form for clinicians to write in with their own examples of “stupid stuff”.
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The most common gripe from doctors so far are around duplicative and low-value mandatory training activities.
Victoria’s department of health currently does not have a central system to record completion of mandatory training, meaning that doctors working across multiple health services have to do the same modules at different workplaces.
“They are compliance measures, and we understand why compliance is what it is, but it wastes clinician time,” Dr Tomlinson said.
“Our senior people say they have to roster people off clinics and off theatre lists so that they can sit there and do their mandatory training each year, and for many of the modules there is little or no meaningful educational value.
“When we hear about people working to top of scope – at what point in a career do you perhaps get a leave pass from annually having to complete the same infection control module, particularly if you might have massive expertise in infection control.”
While the Victorian Department of Health is yet to formally respond, Dr Tomlin said there had been “productive” discussions with Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas.
GROSS has already been implemented in one hospital and health service, Western Health, where it has been in place since May 2024.
The AMAV petition calls on the Victorian Government to publicly commit to implementing GROSS as a priority initiative, appoint a high-level champion to ensure it remains a serious priority and incorporate GROSS into the next round of the health services’ Statements of Priorities.
