Gerard Gill

Professor Gerard Gill is the Alfred Felton Chair in General Practice for Rural and Regional Victoria at Deakin University. This chair is the School of Medicine’s first sponsored chair and was generously endowed by the Trustees of The Felton Bequest.

Professor Gill graduated in medicine from the University of Tasmania in 1975 and after internship at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and further hospital experience at Geelong Hospital and in the Rotating Residency Program in Melbourne, entered general practice in the northern suburbs of Launceston in 1980. He remained in this same practice until he accepted his Deakin appointment in 2011.

While in practice he gained a Diploma in Obstetrics, and the Fellowships of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine. He was one of the ten sponsored Master of Applied Epidemiology in General Practice Evaluation scholars from 1994–6 at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University. In 2002 he was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Medical Postgraduate Scholarship and completed his doctoral thesis in 2006.

As well as these academic pursuits, Professor Gill has been active in a number of medical organisations, having been a member of the Australian Medical Association Council of General Practice and of the Council of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. He was active in founding the division of general practice in Northern Tasmania and was, until he commenced his doctoral studies, a member of the divisional board. He has been an active member of the Army Reserve since 1982, and of St John Ambulance having joined in 1986 as a divisional surgeon. While in Launceston he had a long association with the University of Tasmania, both with the Discipline of General Practice and the University Department of Rural Health, and gained considerable experience as a teacher and examiner for medical undergraduate and postgraduate education.

Professor Gill is member of the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee Geelong Panel. He has been involved in medical postgraduate education in Geelong both within general practice and the wider medical community.

Professor Gill regards himself as a true generalist, bag carrying GP. His research activities focus on the care of disadvantaged populations and the elderly, medical workforce planning, the development of young GP researchers and immunisation.

Professor Gill hopes to inspire Deakin medical graduates to follow his example and live professionally and personally satisfying lives in regional and rural Victoria, while providing high-quality care to their communities and remaining open to change.