Dr Andrew Perry with AMA President at the AMA EWC meeting held in Sydney recently

AMA urges fast tracking of expanded intern training places

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, says 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 on 1 October, 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. There will be around 3,400 medical school graduates in 2012, compared to 2,200 graduates at the end of 2008 but currently there are only 2,030 intern places available across the country.

Dr Pesce said that 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 does not happen, medical school graduates will be blocked from entering the workforce, and the community will miss out on the fully trained doctors so desperately needed.

Dr Pesce said that intern training places must be able to be provided across all settings – public hospitals, the private sector, general practice, and other community settings. Action is needed now to avoid a bottleneck in a couple of years.  Read more

AMA releases Priority Health Investment Plan

The AMA has presented the Prime Minister and the Health Minister with a list of health policy priorities for immediate implementation to give Australians a better health system.

To assist the Government define its health reform agenda, the AMA Priority Investment Plan for Australia’s Health System identifies seven key areas of the health system where urgent action will make a real difference for people seeking access to quality health services.

Medical education and training is a priority area selected by the AMA for immediate significant investment in health. We are calling for:

• 820 prevocational general practice training placements a year by 2012,
• 1,500 first-year GP vocational training positions a year by 2015,
• 3,400 guaranteed intern places by 2013 – 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,
• better access to protected teaching time for junior doctors, 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,
• 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, 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.

Dr Pesce said the AMA plan is simple, immediate, affordable, practical and is common sense.  Read more

AMA writes to Health Minister on the 10-year moratorium on IMGs

The Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) has developed changes to the federal legislation which restricts access to Medicare provider numbers and effectively limits where international medical graduates and “former overseas medical students” can work for a minimum period of 10 years – the “10-year moratorium”.

The proposed amendments would remove anomalies in the moratorium which have adversely affected significant numbers of IMGs, as well as doctors who have been educated in Australia and lived here for many years.

Dr Pesce has written to Minister Roxon to request that the proposed amendments be introduced into Federal Parliament. He says that while the AMA believes an incentives-based approach is better way to encourage doctors to areas of workforce shortage, given the 10-year moratorium is a concrete part of government policy, the AMA wants the changes to the legislation to be enacted as a matter of urgency.  Read more

AMACDT on Facebook

The AMACDT has an AMA Doctors in Training Network on Facebook. This site has photos, links and posts and regular updates on the council’s activities. Click here to go our Facebook site.

Coasting to Gold – 14th National Prevocational Medical Education Forum

This year’s National Prevocational Medical Education Forum will be held at the Sheraton Mirage Resort & Spa on the Gold Coast on 15-18 November 2009. The forum is an excellent networking opportunity for prevocational and vocational trainees. The themes for the forum are innovation in medical education, supervision, doctors’ health and wellbeing, enhancing capacity and national registration and accreditation.

The AMACDT will be presenting the results of the AMA training, education and supervision survey that was conducted in June and July.  Find out more

MedEd 2009 – “Investing in our Medical Workforce”

The medical education conference MedEd09 will be held at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth on
30-31 October 2009. The themes of the conference are increasing health workforce flexibility, achieving vertical integration and building training capacity.

Participants will include doctors in training, representatives from medical schools, specialty colleges, key medical organisations and commonwealth, state and territory health departments.

The AMACDT will have two speakers at the conference. Dr Andrew Perry will present on recognition of prior learning and Dr Michael Bonning will give a trainee perspective on health workforce flexibility. Find out more

6th National Doctors’ Health Conference presentations

Presentations from the ‘Healthy Doctors Better Medicine’ conference held in Adelaide in September are now available. Included is Dr Alex Markwell’s presentation on the AMA’s 2008 national survey on junior doctor health and wellbeing. Click here to view the presentations.

MIGA Doctor in Training Grants Program

The Medical Insurance Group DiT Grants Program provides funding to assist doctors in training to undertake additional specialist training opportunities in Australia and abroad. Up to six individual grants of $5,000 are available to assist doctors cover expenses with this additional training.

Applications close on 30 October 2009. For more information, go to the MIGA website at www.miga.com.au

AMA online fatigue risk assessment tool

Feeling like your roster is wearing you out?

The AMA offers all doctors a unique web-based tool that enables them to evaluate the safety of their roster, and help make hospitals safer for patients and doctors. The AMA's fatigue risk assessment website enables doctors to track their work, on-call, recreational and sleeping hours over a week, and determine whether their work arrangements are placing them at risk of serious fatigue. Find out more.