Quality and diversity in training
The Greater Western Consortium is home to two inner-metropolitan tertiary hospitals: The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Hospital. Each has a full complement of medical specialties, receives referrals from throughout Victoria, possesses professorial faculties of medicine and runs formal examination-oriented tutorial programs for basic physician trainees. Tutorial programs include: written and clinical tutorials, grand rounds, unit-based teaching, Advanced Life Support training and mock examinations.
Affiliated with these tertiary referral hospitals are a number of outer-metropolitan and rural hospitals. As is the case with all consortia of basic physician training, all trainees are required to be seconded to these campuses at various times of their training. Outer-metropolitan and rural rotations are distributed equitably among trainees, and tend to offer closer consultant-trainee and patient-trainee relationships, while allowing trainees to assume greater clinical responsibilities.
The patient catchment areas of Greater Western Consortium campuses contain large and diverse populations with differing socio-economic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Support for basic physician trainees
All Medical Workforce Units in the Greater Western Consortium work vigorously to assist basic physician trainees in all aspects of their employment and training within their own health services. In addition, the Consortium Secretariat prides itself in supporting the recruitment, rotation and education of basic physician trainees across Consortium health services. The Secretariat is independent of, yet works closely with, the Medical Workforce Units of Consortium health services.
Medical Workforce Units in the Greater Western Consortium, and the Consortium Secretariat, are readily available to listen to basic physician trainees, training physicians and other Consortium stakeholders in order to address issues as they arise and improve on the basic physician training experience within the Consortium.
Consortium innovations
One of the chief objectives of the Greater Western Consortium is to improve the quality and equity of basic physician training throughout the Consortium. Existing examples of the sharing and expansion of training activities and expertise include inter-hospital trainee exchanges for mock clinical examinations and the use of video-conferencing equipment to provide local access to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) lecture series. During the months preceding the 2010 RACP written examinations, a Consortium-based written examination tutorial program was implemented using video-conferencing technology to telecast tutorials live between the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Hospital.
