The Rural Generalist Anaesthesia Training Program is a joint initiative of ANZCA, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) to deliver the education, training, and assessment of rural general practitioners and rural generalists providing anaesthesia services in rural locations.
The Rural Generalist Anaesthesia Training Program is a 12 month program leading to a diploma. It is available to rural generalist registrars and fellows seeking formal training and certification in anaesthesia.
This guide contains resources intended to support those participating in the Diploma of Rural Generalist Anaesthesia (DRGA).
What to expect from the guide
The guide has been structured into two sections.
The first section is composed of three main categories (or tabs) covering the course curriculum:
Within each category you will find e-books, journals, articles, podcasts and videos, websites, as well links to other supporting guides.
The second section is comprised of three additional categories (or tabs):
These resources are predominantly e-books and multimedia resources with some supporting websites and articles.
The First Year: What You Should Know After a Year of Anaesthesia Training (Revised Edition) by
Some common clinical questions:
- What are the criteria for extubation?
- What is the intubating dose of rocuronium for a patient who weighs 150kg?
- How do I interpret a post tetanic count?
- How do I manage a LMA with a leak?
- What’s the point of giving midazolam on induction?
- Should I use a cuffed tube in a 4 year old?
- How do I give a morbidly obese patient or child TIVA?
- How do I best use the BIS monitor?
- How do I intubate someone without muscle relaxants?
- How do changes in cardiac output affect the induction dose of propofol?
- Do I have to abandon my anaesthetic machine if there is a power failure?
This book answers those questions and a whole lot more. It is not an exam primer nor is it a comprehensive textbook of anaesthesia. This is the book you give to the trainee specialist who is about to embark on their anaesthesia training. It contains the information they need to formulate and develop a safe practice of anaesthesia. This book lucidly describes and justifies the core knowledge, behaviours and practical skills that a junior trainee would be expected to possess after a year of anaesthesia. Written specifically for Australasian specialist anaesthetic trainees and those doing their Diploma of Rural Generalist Anaesthesia (DRGA), this book fills the gaping hole in the existing anaesthetic literature. The curriculum for the Introductory Training period and the DRGA is comprehensively addressed in this book. The First Year takes the relevant bits of a pharmacology textbook, a physiology textbook, a clinical anaesthesia textbook, an anaesthetics emergency manual and a perioperative medicine guide and ties them together in a succinct but sufficiently detailed volume. This book has been written with the intention of being relevant, up to date, pragmatic and entertaining. Written by a former rural GP, now Senior Staff Anaesthetist, former Supervisor of Training, now Primary Examiner and always an incorrigible cynic; this is the book he would have liked to have when he embarked on his First Year.
2023 edition, updated to address the new DRGA curriculum and structure.
Looking for additional rural health resources? Try the Rural SIG guide.
Looking for indigenous health resources? See the Indigenous health guide.
Find out more
To learn more about the Diploma of Rural Generalist Anaesthesia, see the college page.
RGA curriculum
The current version of curriculum and the training handbook can be accessed below.
Rural Generalist Anaesthesia Training Program Curriculum
Rural Generalist Anaesthesia Handbook for Training
Regulation 44 - Training in rural generalist anaesthesia leading to DipRGA
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