Partnerships to provide seamless high quality medical training in Australia

Dr Pesce said that the AMA believes that Australia needs a national medical training framework with appropriate funding to deliver the right number of highly trained medical practitioners in the disciplines and in the regions where they are needed across the country, urban and rural.

“This will require better planning, coordination and accountability – and partnerships,” Dr Pesce said.

“There must be partnerships between governments, the medical profession, the university sector, and all other groups and organisations involved in the training of medical practitioners.”

Dr Pesce said the AMA is calling for concrete action including:

1. Targets

By end 2010

The Australian Health Ministers’ Conference (AHMC) to develop short-term plans for additional prevocational and vocational training places and ensure that total numbers and locations of training places are matched to the number of medical graduates.

By end 2011

Health Workforce Australia (HWA) to establish a Medical Workforce Planning Advisory Committee that should have completed an analysis of community demand for medical services and associated medical workforce requirements, medical school intakes and graduate numbers, the demand for international medical graduates, and the need for training places.

By end 2012

AHMC to adopt the recommendations from the HWA analysis (see above), including a guarantee to provide the recommended number of prevocational and vocational training places through to 2020.  The Commonwealth’s 60 per cent funding for teaching to be conditional on the States funding and delivering prevocational and vocational places as recommended by HWA and agreed by AHMC.

2. Medical School Places

There should be no new medical schools or any significant increase in student numbers until the above targets are met.

The Commonwealth must ensure that any expansion of medical school places is consistent with the recommendations of the HWA analysis, including future clinical demand and downstream training requirements.

A review of Commonwealth funding for undergraduate medical training must be undertaken to enable medical schools to be less reliant on income from overseas students.

3.Intern Places

A nationally consistent intern allocation process must be established, with all jurisdictions sharing information on applications and adopting an application ‘wash-up’ process to deal with multiple offers.

Intern places must be made available for all currently enrolled international full fee paying students.

Universities and governments must work together in partnership to determine the number of international full fee paying students to be provided with postgraduate medical training in the future.

4. Prevocational and Vocational Training Places

The Medical Training Review Panel (MTRP) to monitor prevocational and vocational training places recommended by HWA.

The MTRP biennial review should continue to identify any ongoing training gaps.

5. Improving the training arrangements

The Commonwealth must require the States to explicitly quarantine funding for protected teaching time and meet appropriate benchmarks under hospital funding reforms.

HWA to continue to develop and fund innovative training programs including training junior doctors to teach and train others.

Training must continue to be provided in general practice, the private sector and other community settings.

Accreditation arrangements must be improved for prevocational and vocational training positions.

A Joint Statement emanating from today’s Summit from the AMA, the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA), Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand (MDANZ), and the Confederation of Postgraduate Medical Education Councils (CPMEC) is on the AMA website at www.ama.com.au

29 September 2010

CONTACT:                        John Flannery                           02 6270 5477 / 0419 494 761

                                Geraldine Kurukchi                           02 6270 5467 / 0427 209 753

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