Health Ministers on the right track with intern places
The AMA welcomes today’s acknowledgement by Health Ministers of the importance of intern placements and the announcement that they are working to develop additional intern placements in private and other settings.
AMA President, Dr Steve Hambleton, said that there is a looming shortage of intern places for medical graduates in 2013.
“The AMA has been highlighting the imminent medical training bottlenecks that will see many medical graduates struggle to find an intern place next year,” Dr Hambleton said.
“Many will confront further obstacles as they progress to seek to achieve full specialist qualification.
“Currently it is estimated that 250 medical graduates will fail to find an intern place next year unless a solution is found.
“There are 3236 Australian-trained medical graduates who have applied for internship positions in 2013 with just 3082 available positions across the country.
“The recent Health Workforce 2025 report concluded that Australia needs to find places for these graduates if we are to ensure that the medical workforce can keep up with future community need.
“However, the training bottleneck is not just a problem for intern places.
“The same report identified that there is an upcoming shortage of training places for medical graduates throughout the training pipeline.
“In 2016, there will be 3867 doctors who require a first year advanced specialist training places, whereas the most recent data show that there are currently only 2817 positions available.
“Even factoring some growth in these places, Health Workforce 2025 is still projecting a shortage of 451 training positions.
“The AMA believes that any solution will require high level COAG commitments to ensure that the funding and resources required to address these bottlenecks in the medical training pipeline are delivered so that patients can get access to the medical services they need.
“It is encouraging from today’s announcement that all of our Health Ministers are alert to the problems and are working together on solutions,” Dr Hambleton said.