Newly appointed to the position of National Clinical Educator - ACRRM Fellowship Education Program, Dr Moody is well known to many at the College having been a medical educator since 2017 and instrumental in the design, development, and execution of the ACRRM Fellowship Education Program. 

Dr Moody is also a Senior Medical Officer at West Moreton Health and the Co-Chair of the Queensland Rural and Remote Clinical Network, which was established to provide leadership and clinical expertise with respect to rural and remote health services to Queensland Health.

We spoke to Dr Moody to learn more about the National Clinical Educator role, the ACRRM Fellowship Education Program, and what registrars should do to get the most out of the program.  

What is the role of National Clinical Educator and how does it relate to the ACRRM Fellowship Education Program?

The purpose of the National Clinical Educator role is concentrated on the ACRRM Fellowship Education Program and ensuring continuous improvement and delivery of that program.  I provide governance over the quality of the content by reviewing the education content and engaging with clinical educators, regional training teams and registrars on improving the content. I am pleased to work under our new Director of Education, Dr Trevor Burchall, and am proud that the college values education as highly as it values training and assessment. 

The Fellowship Education Program is divided into four semesters: A, B, C and D, that are all mapped to the ACRRM curriculum. This is fantastic because the whole program has been written by Rural Generalists and mapped to the Rural Generalist curriculum across all four semesters.   

Semesters A and B are delivered live, whereas registrars are automatically enrolled in semesters C and D and complete that education in their own time.  Every time we deliver semesters A and B, we take a lot of time updating the content to ensure the education we're delivering is completely up to date. 

We also take on the feedback we get from the registrars about the content. Now that we have regional teams within each state and territory in Australia, another part of my role will be to engage with these teams to get their feedback on the program. We're going to use all that information to continuously improve the education we're delivering. 

What advice would you give to registrars undertaking the program?

The ACRRM Fellowship Education Program  is not a hurdle that registrars have to get over to achieve Fellowship. It's designed to be a resource that lifts them up over that hurdle. 

The advice I would give is to make the most of the opportunity that has been presented to you. Pick and choose what topics you want to take a deep dive into and what you think you might just need to take a quick refresher of. 

Registrars are mature adult learners and it's a good idea to, with the assistance of their educators, think about what learning areas within the curriculum they want to focus on, and then use that to help guide their study.   

I also encourage the registrars to engage. The more they engage with the program, the more they'll get out of it. One of the best sources of learning that they have is each other. There's a lot of opportunity within the education program for peer learning, including the online discussion forums, the webinars, and the workshops. The more that they reach out, connect with their peers and through the education program learn from each other, the better doctors they will become, which is the whole point of the program. 

What is unique about the ACRRM education program? 

It has been written by ACRRM Rural Generalists for ACRRM Rural Generalists and completely mapped to the College’s curriculum. It really is one of a kind. There is no other education program, to my knowledge, that offers the content that we teach in our own context, which is dealing with all the varied and different clinical scenarios in a resource poor setting.   

I think the fact that it was written by practicing Rural Generalists is commendable and something we are proud of. 

What is the greatest benefit for registrars completing the program? 

Because the ACRRM Fellowship Education Program  is modelled off what used to be the Independent Pathway Education Program, it has already had several iterations with extensive feedback provided over a number of years. So even though the program is new, the content that we are delivering has already been refined by registrars and educators. 

The purpose of this program and of our Education Development Team is to provide high quality education that registrars can access in a manner that suits them, that fits in with their life, and genuinely helps them to become better doctors.

Read more from Dr Moody here.