AMSA starts national conversation about GP medical graduates

The Australian Medical Students' Association led this week’s roundtable, held at AMA House in Canberra, which looked at ways to encourage more medical students to enter general practice.  

The Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) and the AMA partnered this week to bring the issue of declining GP medical graduates on to the national agenda.  

AMSA partnered with the AMA to hold a roundtable on the issue this week with education and medical stakeholders attending along with Health Minister Mark Butler and his opposition counterpart Senator Anne Ruston.  

The roundtable was the national story of the day for the ABC with extensive coverage of the issue and AMSA president Jasmine Davis appearing on ABC Breakfast TV. 

Currently only one in eight medical students is taking up general practice. Ms Davis said unless there was a turn-around in the decline in medical school graduates intending to specialise in general practice there was likely to be a shortage of up to 11,000 GPs by the end of the decade. 

She said the Medicare rebate was just one part of a very big and complex puzzle of why there was a lack of interest in general practice.  

“If we are seeing that government isn’t investing in primary care, that is sending a message to students and to everyone that maybe that is not where the focus should be.  

“Alongside that, we do almost all our training in the hospital system, so we don’t get as much exposure to general practice,” Ms Davis said.  

“It is definitely not the number one issue for students, but we have seen that it is about the value that we’re placing in the career.  

“The financial side is one piece of a very big and complex puzzle of why we’re not seeing the current interest in general practice.”