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Become a teaching practice

Hosting ākonga in a general practice builds a community of doctors, nurses, registrars, and practice staff who teach, listen, and tautoko each other. All general practices in Aotearoa can apply to be a teaching practice.

Hosting a GPEP year 1 registrar

Your practice is eligible to host a GPEP year 1 registrar if you have:

Having other Fellows of the College employed in the practice is helpful because they’ll be able to provide teaching and supervision if the nominated teacher is on leave.

Hosting a GPEP year 2 or 3 registrar

The requirements for hosting a registrar in their second or third year of study are less restrictive and will be decided based on the outcome of clinical and written exams at the end of a registrar’s first year of study.

Ideally, to host a second- or third-year registrar your practice will have Cornerstone accreditation. However, the College will consider a formal request to host if your practice holds Foundation Standard and is working towards Cornerstone accreditation.

Our expectations of teaching practices

Regardless of whether your registrar is College-employed or practice-employed, the practice must meet these requirements. They are to:

  • Have a teacher allocated to each registrar, who must provide the equivalent of four hours teaching time each week, with at least one and a half hours allocated for individual protected teaching time.
  • Have a teacher (or another Fellow) be present when the registrar is on-site.
  • Ensure registrars are given adequate time, particularly at the beginning of attachment one, to practice safely and enable learning to take place within the consultation. Registrars should start with about five patients per half day, in 30-minute appointments, and gradually build up to shorter appointments by the end of the attachment, ensuring no more than 11 patients are seen in any single session.
  • Organise for the registrar to take a full general practitioner workload and responsibility for a day and ensure adequate supervision and support is in place. This should happen no more than five days in an attachment.
  • Ensure the registrar has adequate time and resources to attend to any patient-related paperwork or administration.
  • Have one day a week dedicated to study or attending regional seminars. That time needs to be provided throughout the attachment to ensure the registrar can complete other GPEP programme requirements.

Being accepted to host a registrar

When we are confident that we can provide a GPEP year 1 registrar to your practice, or that you are going to employ a GPEP year 1 registrar, we will organise a teacher accreditation visit.

We will organise for a regional medical educator to visit your practice, which should take about three hours. During that time the medical educator will observe four to five of your consultations and then discuss your work for about an hour. Reviewing Whakapakari (the GPEP curriculum) will help prepare for this visit.

We aim to allocate GPEP year 1 registrars to practices before the end of the calendar year prior to them starting the programme.

We allocate the registrars for both the first (January) and second (August) attachments at that time. However, we ask that practices understand that sometimes changes need to be made and that a replacement registrar may not always be available.

Payment for hosting a registrar

Practices hosting a GPEP year 1 registrar are paid a fee by the College for each registrar, for each six-month attachment, which covers teaching time. This is paid to the practice (not directly to the teacher).

In addition, for College-employed registrars, the College covers salary, manages leave, and covers additional expenses including some travel, conference fees, and exam fees.

We can answer any questions you have about becoming a teaching practice. Email us at teachersupport@rnzcgp.org.nz or gpepapplications@rnzcgp.org.nz