Does academic general practice have a future?

Discipline of General Practice, School of Primary, Aboriginal and Rural Health Care, Claremont, WA. Max Kamien, MD, FRACGP, FRACP, Emeritus Professor and Honorary Senior Research Fellow. Reprints will not be available from the author. Correspondence: Professor Max Kamien, Department of General Practice, School of Primary, Aboriginal and Rural Health Care, 328 Stirling Highway, Claremont, WA 6010. mkamien@cyllene.uwa.edu.au The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025729X 18 July 2005 183 2 91-92 ©The Medical Journal of Australia 2005 www.mja.com.au Academia and experiential accent on rural medicine and Abo and associated policies on affirmative action for adm vantaged students to medical school. In the early years, our emphasis was on teaching. still are, assisted by several thousand general pract for the most part, follow the injunction of the Hippo “teach students without fee or covenant”. us res sit A tralian academic general practice began in 1975 as a ult of the recommendations of the Australian Univeries Commission Committee on Medical Schools. The new discipline had to struggle against the “torpor and inertia” of most faculties of medicine in providing it with student time and basic resources. But we were patient and resilient, and survived to become a necessary counterculture to the accepted orthodoxy of most medical schools. Our achievements have been in reminding medical faculties of their social responsibility for providing the types of doctors needed by Australian taxpayers, who fund medical education. Consequently, we have been pathfinders for the current educational riginal health itting disad-