Debate fails to address fundamental medical education issues
The health debate today at the National Press Club failed to shed any light on how either leader would remodel health care education, training and workforce planning to ensure the health care workers of tomorrow will be appropriately trained to Australia's high standards, according to the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA).
President of AMSA Mr Ross Roberts-Thomson welcomed the debate and increased public dialogue on health care reform and said there is an urgent need for concrete solutions to the problems facing health education, training and workforce.
"As the Prime Minister mentioned during his closing address, AMSA believes that the move towards increased Federal funding of health care is a positive step. However, some details are lacking and AMSA awaits further announcements regarding medical education, training and workforce," he said.
"What is evident now though, is that during the debate both leaders talked at length about the need for more doctors and nurses, yet neither leader outlined any plan to address the fundamental principle of ensuring those doctors and nurses are highly trained and that there is no bottleneck upon graduation.
"It is not simply a case of increasing medical student numbers and waving a magic wand. To cope with increased numbers, Australia's medical education environment need sound investment in infrastructure, resources and most importantly human capital. The doctors of tomorrow deserve to be trained by the best doctors of today, and under any new funding agreements the Government of the time must ensure that senior clinicians are allocated quarantined teaching time as part of their hospital workload.
"The Government should ensure that being a medical educator is an attractive choice for senior clinicians. There need to be equity in the remuneration rates of health educators and health service providers to help achieve this," said Mr Roberts-Thomson.
AMSA has widely publicised the fact that presently one in four graduates from Australian medical schools are without an intern-placement guarantee.
"Without guaranteed intern places for all medical graduates, graduates will not be able to make use of the recent announcements regarding an increased number of GP training places and the community will be missing out on locally trained doctors," said Ross Roberts-Thomson.
