On the heels of its “I’m not just a GP” campaign, the RACGP is planning to sing the praises of general practice as a career choice
On the heels of the successful “Not just a GP” awareness campaign, the RACGP has set its sights on another promotion – this time to sing the praises of general practice as a career choice.
Mark Rowe, the RACGP’s general manager of education services, has revealed the College has been approached by its counterpart in the Netherlands seeking permission to use the concept to target medical students.
“It’s something we’ve been looking at as well, and it resonates with what they were saying. You’ve got to be able to capture people much earlier than what we are doing,” he said at the recent GP Training and Education Conference in Sydney.
“In the past, despite great endeavours from people, it’s been fairly ad hoc in the way we’ve marketed a career in general practice, especially rural general practice.”
The campaign was launched last year to raise public awareness of the GP’s key role in the health system, featuring smiling doctors on buses, billboards and TV ads and the slogan “I’m not just a GP, I’m your specialist in life.”
It followed the RACGP’s earlier big PR effort, “The good GP never stops learning”, launched in 2015.
Mr Rowe said the College had employed the same group that devised the earlier concepts to come up with ideas to get people excited about coming into general practice.
“If we do that, we will get increasing numbers and we will get the greater capacity to build the services we want.”
