• The need to keep up to date with the many changes and developments in clinical practice.
• Compliance - the need to increasingly comply with an ever and seemingly interminable minefield of regulations and legislation.
• The problems associated with the medical workforce shortage, which puts increased pressure on existing practitioners and makes it difficult or impossible to attract additional practitioners to meet the urgent need for doctors and health professionals in many locations and specialties.
• The problems associated with an aging workforce – we are continually being told of the large numbers of doctors who are poised to retire, further reducing the available workforce. 
• The difficulties associated with working in the ‘embattled’ public hospital sector, (and we note the recent AMA campaign to assist doctors in that sector).
• Dealing with government funding bodies, Medicare and State Bodies.
• Economic changes in practice, with many more ‘corporate players’ in the medical sector who are acquiring and managing practices at a significant rate.

A doctor’s life is not easy, and certainly very different from medical practice of some years ago.  Through our relationship with doctors, we are aware of these pressures, issues and concerns, and try to take a “holistic” approach (to use a rather overused term) and look at the whole, rather than just the component parts.

By way of an example, we have recently advised doctors on a wide variety of issues affecting their practices, such as:

• Medico-legal claims.
• Disciplinary issues, eg. Medical Board.
• Registration.
• Medical practices – buying/selling/introducing new doctors’ succession planning.
• Drugs and poison issues.
• Aged care – end of life issues.
• Hospital employment and IR issues.
• Partnership and succession planning.
• Partnership, Associateships and advising on effective student health practices.
• Selling to a corporate provider.
• Building your own practice, including planning issues, councils, parking, permits.
• Medical records.
• Consent to treatment.
• Medicare, WorkCover, Community Health.
• Advertising, marketing, publications, websites, electronic communication.
• Rural practice.
• Staffing issues.
• Dealing with and responding to patient complaints.
• Clinical issues – quality issues.
• Discrimination.
• Locum services.
• Complementary and alternative medicine.
• Overseas trained doctors.
• Peer review.
• Clinical trials, experimentation and advances in medical science.