The Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) calls on the Government and relevant stakeholders to unite with medical students to address the pending disaster in medical education.
The Government’s own report into Medical Education in Australia has highlighted the urgent need for concrete solutions to the problems facing medical education today. AMSA has today released its Federal Budget Submission for 2010-11 to help address these issues of clinical training and medical workforce planning. AMSA President Mr Ross Roberts-Thomson said today “with the massive and rapid increases in medical student numbers, we now have to deal with this disaster that AMSA has long predicted.
“This report is just the tip of the iceberg. The statistics gathered from the report were from 2005 to 2007. Since then the training environment has become even more stretched with student numbers increasing over 20% more since that time – and numbers will continue to grow..
“We must act now to avoid risking our world-class medical education system so that the community is guaranteed experienced and well-trained doctors in the future. Only through decisive and immediate action can we ensure that the healthcare needs of the Australian public will always be in the safest and most capable hands.” AMSA calls for adequate funding allocation for:
- experienced clinicians to have quarantined time to teach students;
- clinical infrastructure for training;
- adequate training places for all Australian trained graduates; and
- rural incentive programs.
