General Practice

Welcome to the Department of General Practice

As you will see from our strategic plan (opens in a new window), we aim to "work collaboratively", so we are building this webpage to bring you information about us and to provide you with contact information so that you can contribute your ideas and input to our work.

Now in our fourth year of operations, our growing team leads a wide range of teaching and research activities.

Our Year 5 General Practice curriculum is running well in both Urban and Rural sites. We are fortunate to have many GP supervisors who provide quality teaching and are inspiring role models for our students. Penny Burns coordinates the GP Year 3 Medicine in Context placements and Lawrence Tan, ably assisted by Tim Senior, leads the Year 5 teaching program. Nick Collins is responsible for GP supervisor recruitment.

As you can see from our General Practice Research, we are engaged with a wide range of research activities. The key focus of these activities is to improve the health of the communities with whom we work, including through improvement of student learning about primary health care in these communities. We are keen to partner with others, particularly community groups, to build our capacity to find answers to important health and educational questions.

Penny Abbott, Louise McDonnell and Ron Brooker provide the impetus for many of our research activities. In 2013 we have been joined by Dr Trent Reardon and Dr Ruth Morgan who are senior research officers employed on our research related to Otitis Media (NHMRC) and Cultural Education and Cultural Mentoring in General Practice vocational training (GPET).

Charmaine Hernandez assists with our events including Conference Weeks and GP Supervisor training, and Melinda Wolfenden focuses on student placement and assessment, and keeps us all on track!

For those who assisted in our curriculum development in 2010 by responding to our on line survey, you will find a summary of the outcomes at - Community Feedback (PDF, 36.91 KB) (opens in a new window).

We look forward to continuing our work with the communities of Greater Western Sydney, Bathurst and the Northern Rivers. We invite you to keep up to date with our activities by reading our newsletters and to contact us at any time with your input and ideas.

Jenny Reath
(Chair of the Department of General Practice)

Staff Profiles

Professor Jennifer Reath
Peter Brennan Chair of General Practice
Contact Professor Jennifer Reath

Jenny Reath is the Foundation Peter Brennan Chair of General Practice at the University of Western Sydney. Professor Reath has worked for most of her career in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health including as a general practitioner in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services in both urban and rural Australia for almost 30 years. She continues as a part-time General Practitioner at the Aboriginal Medical Service Western Sydney where she has worked for almost 20 years.

Professor Reath has held a number of intersecting roles across General Practice and Indigenous Health. Prior to her appointment at UWS she was Associate Professor of Indigenous Primary Health Care at the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at the University of Sydney as well as GP Manager of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Unit.

Professor Reath is the Deputy Chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Faculty. She is also a member of the Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District Board and of the International Advisory Board of Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Nepal.

Professor Reath's areas of research/teaching interest and expertise include Aboriginal health, Women’s health, Health service development and evaluation, Educational policy, Curriculum development and implementation, and Medical education in a third world context 

Dr Penny Abbott
Senior Lecturer, General Practice
Contact Dr Penny Abbott

Dr Penny Abbott, MBBS (Hons) MPH FRACGP, is a senior lecturer at the Department of General Practice University of Western Sydney. One of her primary roles is supporting the research activities of the Department, with a particular focus on collaboration, social justice and promotion of research important to primary care and the community. She has been a clinician in the Aboriginal community controlled sector and within the women’s health stream of Justice Health for 20 years. She is a member of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners National Standing Committee for Research and Ethics Committee.

She works half-time at UWS and half-time as the GP team leader and a member of the chronic disease team at the Aboriginal Medical Service Western Sydney. She is currently undertaking her PhD, examining the health needs and experiences of women released from custody and community general practice. She has a diverse range of clinical, research and teaching interests including Aboriginal health, chronic disease, blood-borne viral disease, health education and inter-professional collaboration.

Dr Lawrence Tan
Senior Lecturer, General Practice
Contact Dr Lawrence Tan

Lawrence entered Family Medicine training after graduating from Sydney University. He worked in a number of practices in the inner-city and South Western Sydney, then took his family to Bolivia where they have been working for the past 15 years. He has been involved in providing itinerant rural health care in isolated locations, and medical education with the State University in Sucre, helping set up the first post graduate GP training program there. Lawrence is now working as a GP in Bonnyrigg three days a week and assisting the Department of General Practice two days a week.

Lawrence has a Masters of Public Health and Diplomas in both Child Health and Obstetrics and Gynaecology as well as his FRACGP. He has undertaken a number of small research projects relating to common local problems in Bolivia (e.g. tuberculosis, high-risk pregnancy, parasites in children) and is looking forward to developing his interest in how diverse world views and cultures can affect primary health care delivery.

Lawrence will be with the department on Tuesdays and Fridays. He supervises MiC students in his practice and will take responsibility for the Urban GP rotations.

Dr Nick Collins
Senior Lecturer, General Practice
Contact Dr Nick Collins

Nick trained in medicine at the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School of the University of London and gained MBBS in 1987. He then followed his own pathway into GP training and became a Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 1995. After emigrating to Australia in 1997, he worked in Wollongong for three years before achieving Fellowship of the RACGP in 2000.

Nick has been a GP in Campbelltown for over ten years and runs the Macarthur Ambulatory Care Service’s Hospital-in-the-Home (HitH) programme from both Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals.

Reflecting his professional areas of interest, Nick is a site assessor for the Clinical Excellence Commission’s Quality Systems Assessment program and is a member of the HitH Society’s Executive Council as Chair of its 2013 Conference Organising Committee. He has taught at various levels of local undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and has been published in a variety of areas, most recently in GP preparedness for pandemic influenza.

Dr Penny Burns
Senior Lecturer, General Practice
Contact Dr Penny Burns

Penny Burns is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of General Practice and has worked for over 20 years in urban and rural general practice; most recently in inner Sydney general practice. She has worked in disaster medicine at UWS over the last 4 years. Reflecting her interests, Penny has appointments as the Deputy Chair of the newly formed RACGP Disaster Management Special Interest Group; as a member of the NSW Mental Health Disaster Advisory Committee; and on the steering committee of the Australian Child and Adolescent Trauma Loss and Grief Network.

Penny has a wide range of teaching and research interests predominantly based around the role of primary care in disaster medicine; innovation in online blended learning and teaching in postgraduate education; human factors in tunnel evacuations (in collaboration with the Sydney Harbour Tunnel Authority); the effect of animal ownership on human safety in disasters; evaluation of the first cohort of UWS graduates assessing their perceptions of the contribution of the UWS medical course to their current work and to their career choices; and in undergraduate medical student teaching.

Penny graduated from the University of Newcastle in the second cohort in 1984 and undertook three years training in paediatrics at the Sydney Children’s Hospital, before deciding on general practice. She has worked extensively in general practice in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. She has also worked in hospital medicine in Columbia and the USA. In Australia she has worked with the Royal Flying Doctor Service based in Cairns; in Aboriginal Medical Services in Redfern and in Yarrabah Northern Queensland; and in Family Planning in Queensland and NSW. In PNG she has worked as a GP in private practice, in Port Moresby General Hospital and in remote district hospitals and clinics.

 Dr Trent Reardon
Senior Research Officer
Contact Dr Trent Reardon

Trent Reardon comes from a research based exercise science background with clinical trial experience. In his PhD he was focussed on the mechanisms of skeletal muscle fatigue and the role reactive oxygen species play in muscle function in health and disease. Most recently Dr Reardon was a Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne specialising in blood vessel pharmacology in health, cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes.

Dr Reardon has published and edited manuscripts independently and in collaboration with others across a range of fields in high quality journals, using specialist techniques to reveal novel disease mechanisms.

Dr Reardon has joined The Department of General Practice to coordinate an NHMRC funded Randomised Control Trial of antibiotic treatment versus a “watchful waiting” approach to the management of acute otitis media in urban Aboriginal children at low risk of complications of ear disease.

Dr Ron Brooker
Research Officer
Contact Dr Ron Brooker

Ron has worked as an academic in a variety of education and social science sectors. He has substantial experience in research methodology, qualitative data analysis and evaluation. Since joining the Department of General Practice, his research interests of social justice, social change, youth issues and education have broadened to include Medical Students experiences during Justice Health Placements, building Cultural Education and Cultural Mentoring Capacity, the Empowerment of Mental Health Consumers and Mentoring of GP Students. Ron has worked as a lecturer, a supervisor and research officer at several Australian Universities.

Dr Kelly Watt
Academic Registrar
Contact Dr Kelly Watt

Kelly Watt is a GP registrar with Wentwest currently completing an academic post with the Department of General Practice at UWS. She graduated with BSc and MBBS from University of Queensland and has completed an Advanced Diploma of O&G. She has worked in hospitals in Brisbane, Mount Isa and Far North Queensland before becoming a General Practice Registrar. She completed a Masters of International Health with Curtin University, during which she did a Masters research project that evaluated the cultural competence of hospital staff in a North Queensland hospital. She is also working part-time at the Aboriginal Medical Service of Western Sydney. Her areas of research interest include cultural competence, Aboriginal and multicultural health and women's health.

 Melinda Wolfenden
Administrative Officer, General Practice
Contact Melinda Wolfenden

Melinda has senior administrative experience in corporate, industry and government sectors. For the past four years Melinda has worked in a variety of roles for UWS School of Nursing and Midwifery and the School of Medicine.
Melinda coordinates General Practice placements for 5th Year Students.

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Newsletter 

Please enjoy our newsletters which will bring you up to date with our activities in the Department of General Practice and beyond.

Links

The General Practice Students Network (GPSN) (opens in a new window) is a student run organisation that seeks to foster interest in General Practice and promote it as a specialty of choice.

General Practice Organisations

National:

Local:

Contact us

 

Jenny Reath
Peter Brennan Chair of General Practice

4620 3725

0412586135

j.reath@uws.edu.au
Lawrence Tan
Senior Lecturer
(Tue & Fri)		 4620 3896 l.tan@uws.edu.au
Nick Collins
Senior Lecturer
(Mon)		 4620 3896 n.collins@uws.edu.au

Penny Abbott
Senior Lecturer

 4620 3561 p.abbott@uws.edu.au

Ron Brooker
Research Officer

 4620 3894 r.brooker@uws.edu.au

Melinda Wolfenden
Administration Officer

 4620 3896 melinda.wolfenden@uws.edu.au

Charmaine Hernandez
Administration Assistant

 4620 3933

c.hernandez@uws.edu.au

Office Location:

Level 3, Building 30,
Campbelltown Campus

Postal Address:

School of Medicine
University of Western Sydney
Locked Bag 1797
Penrith NSW 2751
Australia

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