Rate My Professor Neil Spike

Professor Neil Spike AM serves as Professor of General Practice at Charles Darwin University’s CDU Menzies Medical Program within the Faculty of Health. A Darwin native, he completed his schooling and university education in Brisbane, followed by 12 years as a solo general practitioner there before transitioning to full-time medical education in 1992. He has since developed nationally and internationally recognised expertise in curriculum development, program evaluation, and assessment of clinical competence at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. MBBS and FRACGP qualified, his career includes a decade at the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners as Director of Assessment and Executive Director, Standards; Head of the Department of General Practice and Deputy Head of the School of Primary Health Care at Monash University from 2004 to 2009; and extensive roles with the Australian Medical Council as discipline head for MCQ and OSCE writing groups, senior examiner, and Board of Examiners member. Consulting engagements encompass reviewing the fellowship examination for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, assessing James Cook University’s MBBS program, and facilitating workshops for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists. Internationally, he has contributed to undergraduate medical education in Malaysia, postgraduate general practice training in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, and accreditation of university medical programs in Saudi Arabia.

Professor Spike’s research interests focus on assessment of clinical competence, standards for individual practitioners and educational programs, educational design, vocational training issues, and integration of international medical graduates into the Australian healthcare system. A Life Member of the RACGP, he received the Rose-Hunt Medal in 2003 for outstanding service in patient care, organisation, education, and research, and the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2019 for services to medical education, particularly general practitioner standards and training. Key publications include “Interpractice variability in antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory tract infections: A cross-sectional study of Australian early-career general practitioners” (2025, BMJ Open), “Caring for kids: Australian general practice registrar confidence in delivering paediatric primary care” (2024, Australian Journal of General Practice), “Temporal patterns of antibiotic prescribing for sore throat, otitis media, and sinusitis” (2024, Family Practice), and contributions to studies on antibiotic stewardship, cardiovascular risk assessment, and general practice registrar experiences.