October 2025

In this month's issue:

• Chair's message
• Medical Board of Australia news
  • Thanks for embracing new technology and renewing your registration on time
  • Annual CPD deadline approaching
  • Supporting the health and wellbeing of Australia’s doctors
  • Guidance on compassionate release of super
  • Accreditation: providing high-quality education and training
• Medical students
  • Final year students - get ready to start your intern year
• News and alerts
  • New resources for ACT doctors about voluntary assisted dying
  • Prescribing framework updated to address evolving healthcare needs
  • Medical Board telehealth guidance shapes rules for health professions
• Contacting the Board

Chair’s message

Thanks for using Ahpra’s new system when renewing your registration this year. Stronger data-security measures changed the process and added a few steps that some doctors found annoying. Ahpra will use your feedback to try to make things smoother next year.

Dr Susan O’Dwyer
Chair, Medical Board of Australia

Medical Board of Australia news

Thanks for embracing new technology and renewing your registration on time

Thank you for renewing your registration and sharing your feedback about the renewal process. This year, 93.5 per cent of eligible doctors renewed on time through Ahpra’s new portal.

We appreciate the feedback you shared about the renewal process. Broadly, more doctors were positive than negative about it, but we hear those of you who had a bad time. Concerns about the workforce survey were the most common issues raised, including its repetition year on year of questions whose answers don’t change. (Fun fact – the annual workforce survey is designed and led by the Commonwealth Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, which piggybacks on our renewal process. It’s not an Ahpra-led survey and we don’t analyse the responses, but we do share your feedback about the survey with the Department, and are looking at how it can be improved.)

Some of you told us about the challenges of setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements, slow load times for the renewal form and autosave issues, and how annoyingly long the whole renewal process took this year, especially for trainees who took the time to do the Medical Training Survey (MTS). (By the way, a big thank you to trainees who did the MTS, you’ll be able to use the latest results to inform your training choices when we publish MTS results in December.)

Your renewal feedback helped us update the instructions we gave during the renewal period and we’re investigating ways to make next year’s renewal process simpler and quicker. Having set up your MFA, this is now done. Please don’t delete your authenticator app now you’ve set it up, as you will need the 6-digit code it sends you when you log in to the portal to renew next year, download a certificate of registration or update your address.

You’ll also need to keep the tax invoice Ahpra emails you after you submit your renewal, as you can’t access your tax invoice from inside your portal.

Medical practitioners with general, specialist and non-practising registration were due to renew their registration by 30 September 2025. If you forgot to renew, you can do it in October, but a late fee applies.

Under the National Law, if you don’t renew your registration within one month of your registration expiry date, your name must be removed from the Register of practitioners, your registration lapses and you can’t practise medicine in Australia until a new application for registration is approved. This can take time.

Annual CPD deadline approaching

Thanks for telling us the name of your CPD home when you renewed your registration. A reminder to those who didn’t — you need a CPD home to log your 50 hours CPD for 2025, which you’ll need to complete by December this year. You can log the details of your 2025 CPD with your CPD home in early 2026, before CPD homes report to the Board on your compliance by mid-year.

Supporting the health and wellbeing of Australia’s doctors

Doctors’ Health Services (Drs4Drs) continues to offer an independent, confidential health service for doctors and medical students across Australia.

The Board is proud to fund doctors’ health services in each state and territory and acknowledges the dedication and contribution of the network of independent service providers who deliver this vital direct care and support.

The Board recently reviewed the de-identified Doctors’ Health Services Annual report to June 2025, which provided valuable insight into the reach, scope and impact of doctors’ health services across Australia — while maintaining strict protections for privacy and confidentiality.

Need to talk? Confidential support is available 24 hours a day — you can speak with a colleague or a counsellor by calling 1300 374 377 or visiting www.drs4drs.com.au.

Guidance on compassionate release of super

We have released new guidance for doctors and dentists to address ongoing concerns about practitioners’ certifying compassionate release of superannuation (CRS).

The Medical and Dental Boards of Australia and Ahpra issued the guidance to remind practitioners that certification requires clinical judgement and is not a tick box exercise.

New Australian Taxation Office (ATO) data show significant growth in applications for the compassionate release of super, with more than 93,500 applications for treatments that include IVF, weight loss and dental procedures. The data show the ATO declined 30 per cent of CRS applications for not meeting the requirements.

The Boards’ guidance sets out how existing professional obligations in the codes of conduct apply when certifying that a treatment is necessary in a patient’s application for CRS. If you’re certifying a procedure, you should be properly assessing whether this treatment is actually necessary and is not readily available in the public health system.

This guidance follows the May 2025 Joint Statement by Ahpra and the Dental and Medical Boards of Australia.  

Accreditation: providing high-quality education and training

The Board has approved the following:

Specialist medical college programs of study

Medical students

Final year students – get ready to start your intern year

Final year medical student? Have you checked your emails for a message from Ahpra to apply for registration now? If you’re about to complete your studies, it’s a good idea to apply before you finish medical school. We can start assessing your application while we wait for your graduate results and you avoid the end of year rush. 

You need to be registered to practise with the Medical Board before you can start work in your intern year.

Your Ahpra portal

First up you need to create an account in the Ahpra portal and then link multifactor authentication to it. Your portal is where you will manage all aspects of your registration throughout your career as a doctor.

There are step-by-step instructions and videos on how to create your Ahpra portal account and securely link your multifactor authentication app.

Applying for registration

There are guides on completing your application for registration, tips for avoiding delays and FAQs on the Graduate applications page of the Ahpra website.

Meeting the registration standards

You may need to provide supporting documents with your application to prove that you meet the Medical Board’s registration standards, including for English language skills.

Timing

Your university will send us your graduation results. If you’ve already submitted all the paperwork required for registration, we aim to finalise your application within two weeks of receiving these results.

For more information, read the news item.

News and alerts

New resources for ACT doctors about voluntary assisted dying

Training and resources for ACT doctors involved or interested in voluntary assisted dying (VAD) are now online on the ACT Government website. Available to all doctors and mandatory for individuals directly involved in VAD, the resources aim to help health professionals understand their legal and regulatory obligations before the introduction of voluntary assisted dying in the ACT on 3 November 2025.

Prescribing framework updated to address evolving healthcare needs

One of the guiding documents used in prescriber education and regulation has been updated and republished, prioritising patient-centred care and responding to the fast-evolving healthcare landscape.

After thorough review, Ahpra has updated Australia’s prescribing framework, shaped by feedback from an extensive consultation.

The framework now includes a new competency around prescribing unapproved therapeutic goods, compounded products, and medicines for unregistered indications. It is available on Ahpra’s website.

The updated prescribing framework integrates other recent regulatory guidance in areas with high volumes of prescribing, including medicinal cannabis and non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

The third edition of the framework also expands on the shared decision-making process, the importance of person-centred care and aims to ensure cultural safety is embedded throughout.

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing commissioned Ahpra to review the National Prescribing Competencies Framework as part of its ongoing commitment to quality use of medicines.

Last updated in 2021, the framework outlines the skills and knowledge required of prescribers, best practice around the use of medicines, and the professional obligations of those involved. It also guides education and training programs, policy development and regulatory responses.

Ahpra will host the third edition until December 2029 when it is next reviewed.

Medical Board telehealth guidance shapes rules for health professions

New guidance on telehealth and virtual care for health practitioners aims to ensure high-quality and accessible patient care.

The new guidance applies to all health professions. It builds on the Medical Board’s existing telehealth guidance for medical practitioners, which has not changed.

New case studies relevant to medicine are published, to help doctors better understand and apply the guidance.

Contacting the Board

The Medical Board of Australia and Ahpra can be contacted by phone on 1300 419 495.

For more information, see the Medical Board of Australia website and the Ahpra website.

Lodge an enquiry form through the website under Contact us at the bottom of every web page. 

Mail correspondence can be addressed to: Dr Susan O'Dwyer, Chair, Medical Board of Australia, GPO Box 9958, Melbourne, VIC 3001.

More information

Please note: Practitioners are responsible for keeping up to date with the Board’s expectations about their professional obligations. The Board publishes standards, codes and guidelines as well as alerts in its newsletter. If you unsubscribe from this newsletter you are still required to keep up to date with information published on the Board’s website.

Comments on the Board newsletter are welcome, send your feedback and suggestions to [email protected].

For registration enquiries or contact detail changes, call the Ahpra customer service team on 1300 419 495 (from within Australia).