AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that the AMA is encouraged by comments from Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, that the Government is keen to expand intern training places, including in general practice.

In a speech yesterday, the Minister said: “We hope to work with States through this agency [Health Workforce Australia] to expand intern training places, including into community settings like general practice.”

Dr Pesce said the AMA would work with the Government in any process to increase intern training places but there must be immediate action to meet impending strong demand for places.

“The Commonwealth has been dramatically increasing medical school places since 2004 to address workforce shortages,” Dr Pesce said.

“There will be around 3400 medical school graduates in 2012, compared to 2200 graduates at the end of 2008.

“But currently there are only 2030 intern places available across the country.

“To become a doctor, medical school graduates need to complete an intern year before going on to undertake training in their chosen specialty.

“It is vital that the Commonwealth works with the States and territories to boost the number of prevocational training positions, including internships, and specialist training positions.

“If this doesn’t happen, we will have medical school graduates being blocked from entering the workforce, and the community will miss out on the fully trained doctors so desperately needed.

“It is encouraging that the Government is alert to this problem and is indicating it will take action to increase the number of intern places.

“The intern training places must be able to be provided across all settings – public hospitals, the private sector, general practice, and other community settings.

“We need action now to avoid a bottleneck in a couple of years,” Dr Pesce said.

Last month, the AMA released its Priority Investment Plan for Australia’s Health System.  Under the Plan, the AMA proposes:

• By 2013, 3400 intern places guaranteed with processes under which States are accountable to the Commonwealth for delivering on this, and an annual process of monitoring by the Commonwealth to ensure that these places are provided;
• Commensurate increases in prevocational training places to meet the increasing number of junior doctors that complete their intern year;
• To restore the balance of service delivery and medical workforce training in our public hospital system and to support a sustainable and well-trained medical workforce, junior doctors must have better access to protected teaching time, while senior clinicians should be guaranteed at least 30 per cent of their ordinary working time to devote to clinical support activities such as teaching and training;
• Progressively increasing the number of first year vocational training places to 2,000 by 2015, over and above the GP training places outlined above, across both public and private settings;
• The Health Workforce Agency (HWA) – in close collaboration with the medical profession through the AMA – to undertake comprehensive and robust medical workforce modelling of supply and demand requirements for the next 10 years to determine the detailed number of vocational training places required in each discipline.  Following this process, there should be a Commonwealth-State Ministers summit to lock in the commitment from governments as required to deliver on these additional vocational training places; and
• The Medical Training Review Panel to report annually on the availability of clinical training places for students at medical school, for doctors in training at prevocational and vocational levels, and to assess progress against the above targets established by the HWA.  This should be accompanied by a Biennial Review of Clinical Training Places to identify training bottlenecks or shortages and to provide relevant policy advice to Government.

2 October 2009

CONTACT:

John Flannery    02 6270 5477/0419 494 761