New GP Placement launching in 2020

We are very excited to announce that from February 2020, all University of Melbourne MD students will experience an early, longitudinal clinical experience in general practice.

After an extensive review, including input from our GP teaching community, the first year of the MD program has been redesigned to include more clinical experience in general practice from 2020. This is in recognition of general practice being a key setting for students to develop clinical and professional skills.

LUMIC (Longitudinal University of Melbourne Integrated Clerkship) will expose students early to the intrinsic role that primary care plays in the health care system. It will provide an opportunity for students to contextualise and apply their learnings from the classroom and see how GPs practice patient-centred medicine.

Students, usually in pairs, will visit the same practice once a fortnight throughout their first year (14 days per student in total). LUMIC will replace the two half day visits to general practice that first year students currently undertake as well as the longitudinal 2^nd year placement that until now was only available to students at the Northern and Western Clinical Schools.

We believe that providing a longitudinal placement to the whole student cohort is a very positive step given that early exposure to general practice in medical courses is associated with more appreciation of the role of GPs in the health care system, and more uptake of general practice as a future career.

We want our quality general practices to be part of this new program and so we ask that you consider becoming part of our inaugural LUMIC practice community. We have had over 80 practices sign up already, but we are looking for more to join.

For further information please contact us by emailing gp-enquiries@unimelb.edu.au or calling 8344 7276.