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30 Mar 2020
The Medical Board responds to the COVID-19 pandemic by making its regulatory approach more flexible.
We are facing the biggest public health challenge of our lives. The COVID-19 pandemic will test our health system like nothing before it.
It is already testing our communities and will test us as individual doctors. Many of us will care for sick and frightened patients. Some will face our own illness and need to care for our families and loved ones. It will stretch us all.
There are likely to be new situations and demands that existing regulatory standards have not anticipated. We may be called on to practise outside our usual scope, to meet unprecedented requirements. Redeployment may become common, to make use of expertise and experience where these are needed most.
The Board understands this. A national emergency requires doctors to meet extreme challenges, which Australia’s regulatory approach must accommodate. If there is a complaint about you during this time, the Medical Board of Australia will take into account the extraordinary circumstances in which you are working and the heavy demands being made of you.
We have never before been called on to respond to a pandemic of this scale. We will be asked to deal with situations we have not previously faced. But our profession has well established behaviours and values to guide us.
Our individual professional judgement will be a critical resource. It will guide our decision-making when supplies are scarce, demand is intense and we are required to practise outside the limits of our previous experience.
The COVID-19 pandemic will forever divide our lives into before and after. How we respond will define us. The need for professionalism and respect has never been greater.
We must care for our patients, ourselves and each other.
The Board has made a series of pragmatic decisions to boost the medical workforce and ease administrative demands on health services, while maintaining patient safety. These decisions will affect your day to day practice, so please read them when you can. The Board recognises that additional changes may be needed as the situation develops.
I know you will do your best in the months ahead. May courage and kindness be your companions. As a doctor, regulator and community member, thank you.
Dr Anne Tonkin Chair, Medical Board of Australia
COVID-19 is posing unprecedented challenges to the health system and wider community in Australia. Meeting these needs an unwavering commitment across the health sector to shared goals, new levels of collaboration and flexibility. In this, all health sector agencies have both responsibilities and accountabilities. As regulators, the Medical Board of Australia and Ahpra must balance public safety with the need to enable governments, hospitals and doctors providing front-line care to sick and vulnerable patients, to do what is needed to respond to COVID-19.
Public safety remains the primary focus of the Medical Board of Australia. However, a national emergency requires doctors to meet extreme challenges, which Australia’s regulatory approach must accommodate.
While maintaining standards to keep the public safe, we are introducing new policies that will get more doctors into the health system, increase employer flexibility and cut red tape. The changes reflect the Board’s existing policy and standards framework and recognise the unprecedented new environment in which doctors are now practising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Board has agreed to the following measures. We are closely monitoring the situation and may make further changes as needed.
The Medical Board of Australia will not take action if you cannot meet the CPD registration standard when you renew your medical registration this year.
We encourage medical practitioners to continue to do CPD that is relevant to their scope of practice. However, we understand that medical practitioners may have difficulty meeting CPD requirements this year as a result of withdrawn/denied leave requests, conference cancellations and the re-prioritisation necessary to meet workforce needs.
The Board will keep a close watch on the situation to determine whether the 2021 renewal year is affected.
We will waive the usual rotation requirements for interns in 2020.
The Board will accept the following supervised clinical experience for general registration:
Health services that employ interns must continue to supervise them and provide them, as much as possible, with meaningful educational clinical experiences and teaching, as well as support during what will be a challenging and difficult time.
The Board recognises that much education is likely to be ‘on the job’ and that this pandemic will expose interns to unique clinical experiences.
For the purpose of granting general registration at the end of the intern year, the Board will accept a report from the Director of Medical Services, Director of Training or another person authorised to sign off intern reports which confirms that each intern has performed satisfactorily during the intern year.
The Board has decided that for the duration of the pandemic, it will streamline processes to enable IMGs within hospitals with limited and provisional registration to be redeployed more easily without a formal application to the Board. The Board will accept a written notice from the Director of Medical Services (DMS) or equivalent of changes to the following:
Change in the supervisor in the following circumstances
Change in the position in the following circumstances
Move from level one to level two supervision in the following circumstances
Other changes in circumstances
At this stage, all other changes in circumstances, including for general practice positions, position changes to a new hospital network and changes in supervision to level three or four will require a usual application for a change in circumstances.
The Board understands that IMGs may have difficulty demonstrating progression towards general or specialist registration, given that AMC and specialist college examinations and assessments have been cancelled.
For 2020, the Board will not refuse to renew an IMG’s registration or refuse to re-register an IMG solely because they have not been able to sit an AMC or college examination or assessment.
This applies to IMGs who were scheduled to sit an examination or be assessed from March 2020.
The Boards and Ahpra are aware that practitioners may have difficulty demonstrating English language proficiency because of the current disruption of English language testing.
We are developing alternative approaches to demonstrating English language proficiency that we will publish.
The Medical Board of Australia and other National Boards are working with Ahpra to streamline the return to work process for practitioners who have been off the Register of practitioners or who have held non-practising registration for less than three years. This is being directed by Health departments to focus on practitioners who are part of the so called ‘surge workforce’ responding directly to the immediate demands of the pandemic and will be expanded in line with their requirements over time.
We will publish more information shortly, as soon as this process has been finalised.