Here is the article from the Australian Medical News today.
Article Date: 26 Aug 2010 - 0:00 PDT
The AMA shares the concerns of Australia's biggest medical schools that the national shortage of medical internships has severe implications for the future medical workforce and its ability to meet the health care needs of a growing and ageing population, with more people suffering chronic and complex conditions.
Dr Pesce said the internship shortage has reached crisis point and all Australian governments, including the next Commonwealth Government, must work together to find solutions.
"The most recent estimate from the former National Health Workforce Taskforce is that Australia has a shortage of around 4500 doctors," Dr Pesce said.
"Since 2004, there has been a strategy in place to increase medical student numbers dramatically.
"By 2012, there will be around 3500 medical school graduates each year.
"This will go a long way towards addressing workforce shortages, although we know that we currently don't have enough supervisors, infrastructure, and other resources to train all these students and continue to train graduates.
"The AMA has been campaigning since 2004 for more support to teach and train these students and graduates.
"We need to invest in infrastructure, fund more supervisors, and utilise settings beyond public hospitals to make sure that students and graduates can get hands-on clinical experience with patients.
"We know that we are fast approaching a crisis in relation to the provision of prevocational and specialist training positions for medical school graduates in hospitals, general practice, and other community and private settings.
"To illustrate the challenge, in 2009 there were 2243 intern positions across the country, which falls well short of the 3500 positions that are needed in 2013.
"Already, NSW, Tasmania and Queensland are looking unable to offer intern places to all applicants.
"Current allocation arrangements give overseas full fee paying medical graduates the lowest level of priority in the system and they will be first cohort to miss out on an intern place.
"But as domestic graduate numbers continue to grow, they too will face the same problem in a year or two.
"Medical training does not stop at the university gate.
"Doctors undergo many years of training once they leave medical school, including prevocational and specialist training.
"They can't go on to get full recognition as a doctor unless they complete an intern year once they leave medical school.
"Unless we devote more resources to medical training after medical school, the reality is that, as graduate numbers grow, more and more graduates will miss out on an intern place and be forced to look overseas to complete their training.
"Given our current workforce shortages, this is an enormous waste of our investment in boosting medical school places.
"The AMA calls for no further increase in student places until the internship and other training issues have been addressed.
"The health system needs to provide enough prevocational and specialist training positions to ensure that all our future graduates can go on to get a comprehensive medical education, and that we fully train enough doctors locally to meet the future health needs of the community."
Dr Pesce said that the AMA has been calling on the Commonwealth to institute benchmarks in its hospital funding arrangements that require the States and Territories to provide sufficient numbers of training places in their public hospitals.
"The Medical Training Review Panel must monitor the performance of the States and Territories against these benchmarks."
Source:
Australian Medical Association
