All international medical graduates (IMGs) who are granted limited registration or provisional registration must be supervised. Supervision remains a requirement of registration for the duration of the IMG’s limited or provisional registration.
The Board’s Guidelines - Supervised practice for international medical graduates came into effect on 4 January 2016.
The revised guidelines replaced the Guidelines for supervised practice for limited registration.
The Guidelines apply to all IMGs with limited registration or provisional registration. The Board expects all IMGs and their supervisors to follow the revised Guidelines from 4 January 2016.
The Guidelines have been reformatted and reworded to make them clearer.
The key changes to supervision arrangements for IMGs are:
Recognising that there are current IMGs already in positions with approved supervision arrangements, the Board has approved transitional arrangements. The transitional arrangements allow a current IMG (who was registered before 4 January 2016) to continue in their current approved position with existing supervision arrangements for a limited period of time. When the transitional period ends or if the IMG wishes to change their position or supervision arrangements, the IMG must ensure their position, their supervisor and their supervision arrangements meet all the requirements in the Guidelines.
The transitional arrangements are outlined in Transitional arrangements for Guidelines - Supervised practice for international medical graduates (274 KB,PDF), Word version (651 KB,DOCX)
FAQ are available to help IMGs and their supervisors determine what they need to do when the IMG is making an application for registration or applying to renew their registration.
Application forms for limited or provisional registration are available on the Forms page.
All principal supervisors, co-supervisors and term co-supervisors (including existing supervisors) must satisfactorily complete the Board’s online education and assessment module on these Guidelines, to ensure that they understand their roles and responsibilities as a supervisor.
Supervisors are emailed directly with information about the module and how to access it after the Board approves the IMG’s supervised practice plan and the supervisor(s).
Section 6.2 of the Board’s Guidelines state that:
‘It is preferred that IMGs with limited or provisional registration work in general practices that are currently accredited to the RACGP Standards for general practices (latest edition).’
There are now four agencies that can accredit general practices:
More information about general practice accreditation is available on The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) website and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care website.