President's Address Oct '98

They are:

1. Industrial Convention

2. Education

3. Web Sites

1. Industrial Convention:

Some of you will be aware of the forthcoming convention at Rozelle Hospital, hosted by ourselves and with top level presentations from the major medical industrial groups, government, the Illawarra MMO Association and the CMOA. There are full details elsewhere in the Bulletin (including an Agenda) but I would like here to give an overview of what we should expect from this meeting. As many of you are no doubt aware, there are inadequacies in the current award structure and there are also problems with the implementation of this award. It is due for review in 1999 and now is a very opportune time to bring up problems and plan for an improved award next year.

The major problems that seem to be affecting CMOs are:

- Keeping CMOs on a level below their entitlement
- Generally low remuneration rates
- Poorly explained employment contracts and lack of long term security
- Use of Temporary Resident Doctors (TRDs) when CMOs are available
- Overtime anomalies
          - the pegging of CMO rates to lesser Registrar rates
          - other professions with substantially higher rates
- Maternity and Paternity leave
- "In Charge" allowance
- Availability of study leave and educational expenses
- Length of Annual Leave

There may be other items that you feel are important - if so please bring them up at the convention or contact myself or others on the committee if you cannot make the meeting.

Another major factor in the industrial forum is whether we should be pushing for a tie between education and experience on the one hand, and the industrial award on the other (as has occurred recently with the Illawarra Multiskilled Medical Officer group). This seems to be inevitable at some stage and it is important that we are directly involved in any discussions along these lines as soon as possible.

2. Education:

The first item is a very pleasing piece of news - the acceptance of the Royal Australian College of Pathologists of the CMOA into their electronic CME program. Those who were at the AGM in February will know how exciting this is - the updated program is still in development phase, but is expected to be running early in 1999. CMOs who would like to be involved should notify me so that we get some idea of numbers.

The other issue is the accreditation by the CMOA of educational units where appropriate - if we wait for someone else to give us certification or acceptance we will wait a long time - there is nothing to prevent us from running educational programs and giving some form of accreditation or certification. My personal belief is that we should be working on this now. Related to this is the maintenance by CMOs of a "Portfolio" - perhaps in special book form - to outline positions held, experience gained and educational courses and qualifications attained. Who can put such a book together for us?

3. CMO Web Sites

The last item to bring to your attention is the presence of two web sites on CMO matters.

The first is a CMO Information site with a great deal of information on awards - CMO, RMO and Specialist -and also links to industrial and other sites.

The other is the official CMOA site. This latter has material on the CMOA, past Bulletins, upcoming events, links to medical sites and a facility for putting comments, suggestions and criticisms that can be accessed by all CMOs .

Both of these web-pages are maintained by David Brock, an energetic and skilled CMO from Tweed Heads and I ask all CMOs with internet capability to check out these sites and make a habit of reviewing them on a regular basis. All contributions (information, ideas, suggestions etc.) are greatly appreciated.

The sites are:

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~davbrock/cmo/cmo.htm
http://www.cmo.asn.au/

See you at the convention

John Egan

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