Membership
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AFMW membership entitles you to:• Leadership development, networking and mentoring opportunities Medical women can join AFMW directly, or through joining their affiliated state medical women's society. Full membership is open to registered female medical practitioners of Australia. Associate membership includes non-registered female medical practitioners and medical students. To find out how to join your state Medical Women's Society please go to the menu at left, select your state and click on the members link. If your state membership form is not yet posted on this website please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for a direct membership application form. Direct membership of AFMW is $50 for full members and free for students. AFMW and rural, regional and remote medical womenWe are keen to further extend our membership and representation of rural, regional and remote Australian medical women. Our state based organisations have noted limitations in their ability to encompass these valuable medical practitioners as many of the state activities focus around social networks or events in metropolitan areas. AFMW aims to take practical steps to address issues facing our country colleagues in. We know that the issues faced by regional, rural and remote female practitioners are different to their metropolitan counterparts, but there are common themes relevant to both groups. The issues we have identified for non-metropolitan medical women include: Networking Rural practitioners crave social support and a chance to debrief with other colleagues, as they are not able to network with colleagues on a regular basis. A national female network offers support and debriefing opportunities as well as mentoring and distribution of information for interested practitioners and students. Personal Safety Females in rural communities encounter issues with personal safety - house calls to new clients out of town become a balance between delivery of service and personal risk. Practice and personal safety requires awareness and vigilance. Child Care Rural practitioners generally have more on-call time and need child care facilities available almost 24hrs a day. Access to child care in the rural setting is a barrier for females to rural practice: practitioners are separated from their extended families and have difficulties keeping their family issues separate from the residents of the community. Maternity Leave Leave when having a family is almost an impossibility in rural practice. This often hinders the retention of female GPs during their child bearing years. Training Females often have difficulties with training including timing, content and presentation of CME and other educational programs. Training programs need to be more responsive to the needs of female doctors with children in relocating to or requiring training in rural or remote areas. Support and Stresses of Workplace As females and males have different ways of dealing with stress, there needs to be gender specific support and mental health programs. Leadership The majority of decisions made on behalf of female rural GPs is done with an inherent gender imbalance. The decisions made can only hope to represent the opinions of the demographic of the people making the decisions. Females need appropriate representation in order for decisions to be relevant to their issues. Information Rural females are often less informed regarding extra assistance such as relocation and training assistance. Remuneration Due to the fact that females spend more time per appointment with their patients, females experience less remuneration per hour. In rural regions where bookings are full for periods in advance, there is less time with shorter appointments for acute problems. |
