Educational Background
" Throughout my career, I've always done something academic in conjuction with something clinical - for example I started my Masters in Public Health during my intern year in Wollongong and finished it off while I was a GP in country Victoria, doing my thesis on counseling in general practice. At the same time, I did a Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine and then a Diploma of Obstetrics. The Obstetrics was just to help me be a rural GP - you need it to do the antenatal care, even if you don't do deliveries."

Louise graduated with both a medical degree and an arts degree from the University of Sydney in 1991. She then obtained a Masters in Public Health from the University of Wollongong, a Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine from Monash University and a Diploma in Obstetrics from the Royal Australian College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology - all in 1993.

In 1995, Louise attained Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.

General Practice
" I worked as a GP in Foster, three hours east of Melbourne, for ten years. Our practice was the only practice in town and we had a little 15 bed hospital. It was an hour and a half from the nearest major hospital - so we had a couple of visiting specialists. We had two GPs that did anaesthetics, two GPs that did surgery and we all did obstetrics. I set up a Women's Health Clinic and ran that for about 8 years with the community nurse.

I really enjoy the challenge of being a GP. You never see the same thing twice - or very rarely. I also enjoy explaining things to people, particularly with mental health, because half your work is done if people understand what's going on and they want to treat themselves.

For me, the hard part of being a rural GP was being on the edge of my skill level. There are only so many courses you can fit in."

Women's health and mental health were Louise's main areas of focus in practice for ten years. She was the only female doctor for much of that time and spent much time educating the community about issues such as menopause.

Being a rural GP, Louise also had responsibilities for obstetrics and a broad range of accident and emergency work. She admits to having felt uncomfortable as a proceduralist, and often called upon the help of colleagues, such as the GP anaesthetist in areas where she had little experience.

Louise still works part-time as a GP in Sydney's Five Dock.

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Medical Education
" In Foster I was always a supervisor of registrars. I believe that thinking about what you do makes general practice more satisfying - particularly if you're constantly working out how you'd break something down to its elements to teach it. I'm constantly looking for ways to organise and simplify learning materials. I find that makes the process more intellectually stimulating.

There's an author who talks about "the silent observer" in every consultation. Whenever you run a consultation, there's the conversation that you have with the patient and there's an internal conversation that comments on what's happening. So you're constantly saying "I don't think they understood that question" or "hey look like they're not taking that in any more, I think I'll have to back off." Education is often about making that internal conversation more obvious to the registrars."

In addition to being a busy rural GP in Foster, Louise worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Masters of General Practice Psychiatry Program appointment at Monash University for ten years. Some of this was conducted as distance education.

She continued teaching in the program until she started work at SIGPET in 2001, where she still focuses on mental health. She is deeply involved in the creation of a Learning Content Management System for SIGPET because she believes that online learning will become increasingly important, especially for registrars with children.

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GP Registrars
"I believe GP registrars need the capacity to be curious about the way people live and work. The thing that has made the biggest difference to me is listening to people's stories. That richness enables me to better educate the next patient that walks in the door.

If I could give one piece of advice to a registrar I'd say you should never expect to know everything. In general practice that never happens because every time you've addressed one learning need, another one will pop up. And over time the thing you think you' ve learned has changed - maybe there's been a change in treatment or an advance in understand. So you're constantly like a person on a tightrope, correcting what you don't understand. It's important to undertand that general practice is a lifelong learning exercise - with every consultation being an opportunity to do better."

SIGPET
" We have a very diverse cohort at SIGPET, and it's been my experience over the last 3 or 4 years that we'll always have people with different senses of their own deficiencies. So we try to cover the curriculum as broadly as possible - the curriculum' s extensive and it's a challenge to work out which aspects should be taught within the formal teaching program and which aspects should be taught experientially.

I see SIGPET as a resource for Supervisors as well as registrars, because they have the difficult task of balancing the work they require from registrars with the teaching and support they provide."

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