More medical students not the answer to workforce shortages

The AMA says the Go8’s call for 1000 extra Commonwealth-supported medical school places is premature and could divert funding away from where it is most needed.

Medical workforce shortages, including of specialist and GP services, are having a real impact on patients in some parts of the country, however a return to a boom/bust approach to medical workforce decisions is not the answer.

Australia has increased medical school intakes dramatically over the last 15 years and now graduates medical students at a rate well above the OECD average. For example, in 2019 in Australia there were 15.9 medical graduates per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the UK with 13.1, Canada 7.1, and the USA 8.1.

Unfortunately, Australia is not doing enough to encourage these record medical graduate numbers to work in the locations and specialties where they are most needed.

Australia can deliver much better patient access to medical services right now by looking more closely at opportunities to bolster prevocational and specialist training places around the country. The AMA has set out a comprehensive strategy for this including:

• Promoting a career in general practice by growing prevocational training opportunities in general practice and improving employment conditions for General Practice Registrars so they match their hospital-based colleagues.
• The expansion of the Commonwealth Government’s Specialist Training Program (STP) to 1700 places over the next term of Government, giving priority to rural areas, generalist training and specialties that are under-supplied.
• Investment in regional teaching hospitals to ensure they have sufficient capacity to host STP-funded non-GP specialist registrars.
• Implement the National Rural Generalist Pathway nationally, and a commitment to ongoing funding.
• Encouragement of end-to-end rural medical training programs, with a view to ensuring they provide positive rural exposure and lead to retention of rural medical practitioners.
• Expansion of capacity for remote learning (training and educational opportunities, especially for trainees in regional/rural sites, and potential remote supervision); and
• Promotion of regional training and research teaching hospital hubs to grow non-GP specialist capacity outside metropolitan areas.

Increasing medical student numbers must be based on planning that includes consideration of the whole medical training pipeline from medical school through to College Fellowship.

Australia now has a National Medical Workforce Strategy, and the AMA agrees with the Go8 this must be funded and implemented as a matter of urgency, with data driven medical workforce supply and demand modelling being an urgent priority. If these processes then recommend changes to medical school intakes we should follow them.