Professor Leon Piterman

Head, School of Primary Health Care

MBBS, MMed, MEdSt, MRCP(UK) FRACGP

Profile

Professor Piterman is currently Professor of General Practice at Monash University and Head of the School of Primary Health Care and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. Having graduate in 1971 from Melbourne University after a number of residency posts in Melbourne and London he combined clinical general practice with a part time academic career at Monash until 1993 when he took up the post of Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of General Practice. He is responsible for establishing Australia’s largest and most successful University based Diploma/Masters program for general practitioners. Professor Piterman is a member of the Board of Examiners of the Australian Medical Council, an examiner with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and sits on numerous university, professional and government expert committees. He has published widely on clinical and educational issues related to general practice. In 1994, he shared the Hong Kong College of GP prize for best research project based on Study of Attitudes to institutional care of aged in Hong Kong, and in 1995 developed Clinical Audit Methodologies and established links between audit and continuing education. He is also a forerunner to the RACGP CME and Audit program. Professor Piterman has supervised 27 Masters thesis in General Practice over a five-year period with almost half of these resulting in publication. Finally, Professor Piterman received funding from Andrology Australia to implement and evaluate the GP education project for years 2002-2003, and has almost completed an NHMRC project titled “A randomised trial of telephone support for chronic health failure patients at high risk of hospitalisation”.  Professor Piterman is currently a chief investigator on one other NHMRC grant "Mass disseminable approaches to smoking cessation in general practice”.