Teaching Practices

Glenfield Doctors
52 Chartwell Avenue Glenfield
Tel: 09 4412352
Fax 09 441 6176
Email: office@glenfielddoctors.com
Website: www.glenfielddoctors.com

Teacher: Jon Wilcox

Glenfield Doctors is a small 'traditional' urban solo practice on Auckland's North Shore with over 3000 registered and validated patients.

Demography

Glenfield has been described as New Zealand's largest suburb and over the last 15 years has taken on a remarkable demographic transformation with the influx of a large number of immigrants from the Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and the Middle East.

Around 50-60% of our patients have community services cards, though these figures are gradually changing as hard-working immigrants obtain longer term and stable employment. Because of the large number of families attending the practice we opted to change our GMS funding stream over to Capitation-Based Funding (CBF) in 2003, and the improved funding has a flow-on effect with better quality of care and new clinical initiatives.

The principal at Glenfield Doctors is Dr Jon Wilcox, who has been involved with registrar teaching for around 10 years from 1985, until funding and registrar continuity problems intervened. Over subsequent years from 1995 to 2001, he concentrated mostly on undergraduate and trainee intern clinical teaching, until opting to re-enter the intensive clinical training programme in 2001.He also continues to practise intra-partum obstetrics and provides the opportunity of registrars who are interested in obstetrics seeing antenatal patients and also attending labour with him optionally and where practicable.

Glenfield Doctors was fully accredited as a teaching practice in 2002 (prior to the introduction of the Cornerstone accreditation programme) and will be undergoing reaccreditation in 2008.

The Practice

We offer superb ‘character’ premises, excellent print library and an unlimited instantaneous electronic text and journal library in all consulting rooms via ADSL/Broadband. The registrar and principal have ‘twin’ consulting rooms. We have computerised ECG, tympanometry and minor surgical equipment and facilities. Digital images of the premises can be found through the practice website at http://www.glenfielddoctors.com.

The practice is fully computerised with Medtech-32. A training CD is available and recommended for registrars intending to work at the practice, especially if they are unfamiliar with this particular practice management software (PMS). All our correspondence which is not received electronically is scanned and the role of written notes and old records is diminishing. We are also moving towards comprehensive READ disease-coding of both new and old clinical encounters for administrative, PHO-oriented and research purposes.

Important

Registrars are also expected to be appropriately experienced and skilled in normal conversational English as well as 'medical' English. From our patients' point of view we strive to provide clinical safety and also 'value-for-money'. The other important registrar pre-training skill that cannot always be readily assessed is minimum level typing skills, as we type almost all our notes throughout the practice. This does not need to be 10-finger 'touch typing' but rather a good familiarity with the keyboard layout and the ability to type around 30-40 words per minute. Any applicant registrars would be urged to practise keyboarding intensively prior to their attachment. This might include for example the preparation of a special pre-attachment 10-20 page assignment/project, or other suitable evidence of basic level keyboard knowledge.

Hours and Teaching

We work Monday to Friday 8am to 5.30 with additional Saturday morning clinics or conjoint (registrar/teacher) A&M sessions with Shorecare, the local 24 hour provider, to meet the minimum requirements of the programme. Consulting with patients is a mix of independent 'registrar-booked' consultations and conjoint consultations (booked for the principal but get to be fully 'triaged' by the registrar first, and also 'sitting in' with the principal.)

Teaching sessions are reasonably informal and may be topic-based (either registrar or teacher chosen) or case-oriented. Teaching sessions are twice weekly and can either be early mornings or over an extended lunch-hour. Despite some informality, obviously punctuality is appreciated and can avoid the re-scheduling of teaching sessions.

The Community

Access to Glenfield Doctors is just minutes from the "Tristram Avenue/Glenfield" exit (next past the Northcote exit) off the Northern Motorway. A mini-map can be found at the bottom of http://www.glenfielddoctors.com home page.

To get a more in-depth background to the Glenfield area select the Registrar/Teaching button on our website at www.glenfielddoctors.com