To my GPSN team,
Many of us are back at university now, settling into the familiar rhythm of lectures, tutorials and placements. So if you’re reading this, thank you for pausing.
Last time I wrote about reflection and why it’s worth cherishing. Let’s do exactly that.
Statewide success
July was a busy month for GPSN, with statewide events in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory bringing together medical students from different universities for a weekend focused on general practice and rural generalism. Keynote presentations and hands-on clinical skills workshops covered everything from suturing to IUD insertion.
Our GPSN NT club also held its first event in collaboration with the Adelaide University and Flinders University clubs, featuring an intriguing panel discussion on healthcare past, present and future.
We are incredibly proud of the hard work and dedication our local club executives put into running these events. The passion for general practice and rural generalism is clearly here to stay.
Standing up for paid placements
Last month, the Federal Government extended the Commonwealth Prac Payment to students in 10 more allied health disciplines. It is a decision to welcome, but it leaves medicine as the only major placement-heavy health degree still excluded, despite the thousands of hours of mandatory placement each of us completes.
Together with General Practice Registrars Australia, we have released a joint media statement calling on the Government to commit to a timeline for extending eligibility to medical students.
This matters for our community in particular. When placements carry a cost, rural and general practice terms are often the first ones students cannot afford to take, leaving career options to hang in the balance.
Read the joint statement from GPSN and GPRA.
Calling all future interns – apply for the Alice Springs immersion program by 11 August!
We often talk about the disparities in rural health, but for most of us, those disparities remain as numbers on lecture slides rather than realities we truly experience.
The GPRA Alice Springs Immersion Program is different. It offers a fully-funded opportunity for two medical students to immerse themselves in the local community, learn from the clinicians who serve it, and gain first-hand insight into the unique challenges and rewards of practising medicine in Central Australia. The immersion program runs for one week in November 2026 and includes hospital, primary care and outreach clinic immersion fully supported by the Medical Education Unit at the Alice Springs Hospital and local primary care providers.
While no short program can capture the full reality of rural practice, it provides a genuine glimpse into the impact you can have and the privilege of serving a community like Alice Springs. For many of us, that sense of purpose is exactly why we chose medicine in the first place.
Applications close on 11 August — apply today!
The slow process of change
After your immersion program, if you drive out of Alice Springs, you might pass termite mounds standing taller than a person, built by insects only a few millimetres long.
No single termite understands the structure they are creating, yet each one carries a small grain of soil and places it exactly where it needs to go. Over time, the mound becomes the sum of those countless contributions.
Advocacy works the same way. No single conversation changes a curriculum and no one meeting fixes a placement.
Change comes through collective momentum. It comes when enough students share the same concerns that they can no longer be dismissed as isolated experiences.
Our advocacy is only as strong as the number of people willing to add their grain.
Have you completed a GP placement? GPSN wants to hear from you!
This brings me to the GP-PULSE Survey, which GPSN is proud to launch today.
It only takes 5-10 minutes to complete the survey, and it is one of the most direct ways you can make a difference this year. You could also win a $100 gift card or eMedici access codes!
One of our core aspirations is improving the quality of GP placements in medical curricula across the country, and to do that, we need to hear about yours.
By sharing your experiences, you can help us advocate for better placements for the students coming after you, and benchmark universities on GP placement quality nationally.
On its own, one response is a single grain of soil. Together they become a mound of evidence.
GPSN is not just a network of clubs. It is a community, and like termite mounds, communities are built through the collective efforts of many people, each carrying something that contributes to the whole.
Thank you all for the passion, time and energy you continue to give to GPSN and to the future of general practice.
Until next time,
Dineshe
Dineshe Mohanarajah
GPSN National Chair 2026
