Supervision

All international medical graduates (IMGs) who are granted limited registration or provisional registration must be supervised. Supervision remains a requirement of registration for the duration of the IMG’s limited or provisional registration.

Guidelines

The Board’s Guidelines - Supervised practice for international medical graduates came into effect on 4 January 2016.

These guidelines replaced the Guidelines for supervised practice for limited registration.

The Guidelines apply to all IMGs with limited registration or provisional registration. 

Applications for registration

Application forms for limited or provisional registration are available on the Forms page. 

Supervision templates

Online education and assessment module for supervisors

All principal supervisors, co-supervisors and term co-supervisors (including existing supervisors) must satisfactorily complete the Board’s online education and assessment module on these Guidelines, to ensure that they understand their roles and responsibilities as a supervisor.

Supervisors are emailed directly with information about the module and how to access it after the Board approves the IMG’s supervised practice plan and the supervisor(s).

There are FAQs for supervisors about the module.

Accreditation of general practices

 Section 6.2 of the Board’s Guidelines state that:

‘It is preferred that IMGs with limited or provisional registration work in general practices that are currently accredited to the RACGP Standards for general practices (latest edition).’

There are now four agencies that can accredit general practices:

• AGPAL Group of Companies
• Quality Practice Accreditation (the program is known as GPA ACCREDITATION plus)
• Global Mark (new)
• Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (new).

More information about general practice accreditation is available on The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) website and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care website.

More information

Medical Board - Fact sheet - International medical graduates requesting a change to their supervision level (89.0 KB,PDF), Word version (167 KB,DOCX)

IMGs in hospital-based positions

The Board has developed guidance to assist hospitals to propose alternate supervision arrangements for IMGs in hospital-based positions. The Information sheet does not change the requirements in the Guidelines. Each IMG must still have their supervision arrangements approved by the Board.

Feedback on the Information sheet and the new section in Supervised practice plan and principal supervisor's agreement for IMGs with limited or provisional registration SPPA-30 is welcome at IMGSupervision@ahpra.gov.au. The Board will review the Information sheet after 12 months or earlier if required.

• Information sheet - International medical graduate supervision in hospital-based positions (110 KB,PDF), Word version (174 KB,DOCX)

Retired versions