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Australia to have "too many" doctors by 2030 despite shortage in rural areas: gov't

Xinhua, December 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Australian government has on Wednesday ruled out increasing the number of medical school places offered at universities, as it tries to convince doctors to pick up work in rural and remote areas.

Assistant Minister for Rural Health David Gillespie said Australia is expected to have thousands of excess of medical practitioners by 2030, thanks to a concentration of doctors in major cities, while those in regional areas of Australia are expected to continue struggle to find a local doctor.

"We've expanded medical undergraduate places by over 100 percent since 2001, because we had an absolute shortage, but now predictions are that we'll have 7,000 excess medical practitioners by 2030," Gillespie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday.

"So we want to look at the distribution of undergraduate training, see what works best, with the aim of addressing the shortage of medical practitioners in rural and regional Australia."

Gillespie said while many doctors prefer to live in major cities close to family and friends, those who are open to the idea of moving to rural areas end up getting tied to the cities in which they study.

"The baggage one collects in one's life, partner, mortgages, houses, friends, schools, children, if you've been there six or seven years, that's where you more than likely stay," he said.

In an attempt to combat the issue, the government has already announced a 70 million U.S dollar program to create specialist training facilities in regional areas.

"We're going to assess the whole box and dice and see what works for rural and regional Australia," Gillespie said.

Meanwhile President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Michael Gannon agreed with the government, saying more study places were not needed, just a better spread of doctors in rural cities and towns.

"The last thing we need are more medical schools," Gannon said. "What we need to see is an expansion of the investment in existing rural clinical schools and a serious look at the process of reallocating numbers to those universities with rural clinical schools, or to schools that are in rural areas themselves." Endit