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COAG reports on the Medical intern review

Health Ministers have released a statement on the Review of the Medical Intern Training Final Report, accepting several recommendations including the two-year transition to practice model. The AMAs response to the Medical Intern Review Options paper in 2015 supported incremental, evidence-based change to the current model of internship focusing on improving supervision, assessment processes and expanding prevocational experience in non-traditional settings such as the community and private settings.

The recommendation in question states:

“Recommendation 3 That the current model of internship move to an integrated, two-year transition to practice model, with the first postgraduate year continuing as a prerequisite for general registration and with a certificate of completion, auspiced by the Australian Medical Council, to confirm a set of agreed outcomes aligned to vocational training. This should occur within 2-5 years. We recommend a model based on the first two postgraduate years and which maintains the current flexibility to enter vocational training from the second postgraduate year. We also recommend testing the option of the two-year period being the final year of university and first postgraduate year.”

While this sounds somewhat like the UK Foundation Programme, little other detail around the development of a two-year transition to practice model is available at this time and the AMA Council of Doctors in Training will keep a watching brief on this issue.

The next phase of this project will be led by New South Wales on behalf of the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council.

The response of Health Ministers to the recommendations is set out here.

The AMAs full response to the Medical intern review is here.

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