DAP+ Traineeship program welcomes first graduates

The DAP+ Team’s college-based specialty traineeship program has welcomed its first graduates, Dr William Yu and Dr Bernice Ong.  

The traineeship program was designed to build capacity in endocrinology and develop the skills of future practicing endocrinologists.  

Selected through a competitive process, successful candidates experience a 12-month placement with the DAP+ team, exposing them to the unique model of community-based diabetes care alongside their Endocrinologist mentors.  

Trainees get first-hand experience of the case conference model involving teams in rural general practice. They travel to rural towns for week-long visits involving in-person patient encounters, lunchtime sessions with GPs to go over their performance reports, visits to local outpatient clinics and attendance at local dinner education sessions that help to upskill general practice staff.  

Dr William Yu, who has now joined the DAP+ Team, says he feels lucky that he was the first.  

“I got to participate in the creation of a new service with aspects like teleconferencing and the Advice Line still being worked out. I found it very insightful to be able to navigate the structural challenges that come with setting up a new service.  

“This aspect of the traineeship also impacted my personal career. Because I was involved at the early stage, I got to build working relationships with many of the team and they considered me for ongoing work. I am now employed as a consultant with DAP+. But I found the clinical work the most rewarding aspect, particularly the rural trips. You really get to see patients with severe disadvantages in terms of health and socioeconomic status. This shapes you as a clinician and gives you more of an appreciation of the breadth of services we have in metropolitan centres like Newcastle,” says Dr Yu. 

Dr Bernice Ong is the second trainee to complete program.  

She says, “Through exposure to the case conferencing model, I learnt how to communicate with GPs and break things down in a way that was meaningful to them but still professional. They also got to ask questions. This was so much more fulfilling than writing a referral letter. There was an educational aspect that will have a spillover impact on their future patients. 

“I have had rural hospital placements before but this was my first exposure to primary care. I hadn’t even heard of PHNs (primary health networks) before this traineeship. I now know so much more about delivery of primary care in regional Australia. I also got to spend a week in Tenterfield and a week in Tamworth and attend the DAP+ Conference which gave me so many opportunities to meet and work with GPs and practice nurses. The skills I have learnt have been immediately transferable to my current role at Western Sydney that has a similar model of care, but in the longer term. I hope to run a monthly clinic in a regional area myself. The DAP+ traineeship confirmed that this is an interest area of mine,” says Dr Ong.  

Since September 2023, the trainees also helped to develop, implement and then staff the DAP+ Advice Line, a telephone-based specialist endocrinology service available to rural and regional practitioners.  

When scheduled on the Advice Line, trainees field calls about the diverse issues faced by rural and regional practitioners, triage them based on urgency, learn what services are available in each area, develop care plans that are approved by endocrine consultants, and work in a supported but high-pressure, high-paced environment. Trainees log all the calls and response details into a database for monitoring and research, exposing them to the importance of reflective practice and continuous quality improvement.