stressed out interns (1 Viewer)

[ninjapuppet]

Just thought this is an interesting read.

Hospitals buckle in 'tsunami' of interns

When i did med 10 years ago, it was a totally different situation back then. If you couldnt land yourself a job in a metro hospital, you took for granted that there was one waiting for you in rural.

i hope the situation improves in 3 years, but by the sounds of it, doesnt look too bright.

 

[HMF]

meh, I don't see anything wrong with them studying in Australia, but I think it's the right decision by the government to not allow them to do their internship in NSW taking places from Citizens, they need more "australian doctors", I know this may sound racist. I volunteer in the paediatrics ward @ John Hunter 5 - 17, the amount of indian and asian interns/doctors is overwhelming. One of the kids said they just don't talk to you and recognize you as the one who is suffering, they look at you as a lab rat. Maybe the government should create links with other Asia-pacific areas to conduct internships for overseas doctors, they obviously fork out the money to train in oz, why not fork out some-more to train in an asia pacific area???

 

[Wooz]

meh, I don't see anything wrong with them studying in Australia, but I think it's the right decision by the government to not allow them to do their internship in NSW taking places from Citizens, they need more "australian doctors", I know this may sound racist. I volunteer in the paediatrics ward @ John Hunter 5 - 17, the amount of indian and asian interns/doctors is overwhelming. One of the kids said they just don't talk to you and recognize you as the one who is suffering, they look at you as a lab rat. Maybe the government should create links with other Asia-pacific areas to conduct internships for overseas doctors, they obviously fork out the money to train in oz, why not fork out some-more to train in an asia pacific area???

HMF: what about those who were non-permanent residents at the time, as some of my friends are and who now are Australian citizens but will miss out simply because they have and Int-fee spot. The doctors your talking about are those filling the gaps because of the previous shortage of doctors, now we have a situation where the federal government has more than doubled the number of medical schools in Australia, whilst the state governments who are responsible for training interns and JMO's simply do not have the capacity to train all of them. That's why Int-fee students have been pretty much ruled out of internship.

Many of these doctors came from asia/pacific under 187 etc visas not to train but to fill the voids of our aging population and health workforce. There are also problems if Australian international grads train overseas some are from island countries which do not have medical schools, so where do they go and how will they be expected to train/work in their own country if they can't even be recognised with registration i.e. internship (you must be registered with a medical board and complete internship before you can even get your MBBS, BMed, etc recognised.)

I think the internship allocation system will gradually change again as the various state governments learn to grapple with the challenges at hand. Some of the solutions are cutting Emergency out of the internship rotations, opening up new medical specialities to interns such as Medical Administration, doubling up of interns with doctors, e-learning, clinical skills classes, lectures etc.

 

[Wooz]

do u think theyll cut uni places?

No, not until the follow through effects are felt on the workforce despite the training bottleneck.. i.e. Only once many chronic shortages are either filled, but on the other hand many rural and remote positions may never be filled on a full-time bases. The federal government is still even trying to open a new medical school in the NT, despite the training problems. Some academics I have spoken too say even despite the inc in doctors, we still won't have enough for rural remore areas, but it may be a different case for metro areas.