South Australian medical graduates will be forced to look interstate or overseas to complete training if state government funding is not found for up to 50 junior doctor training positions, senior doctors have warned.Source: Supplied
SOUTH Australian medical graduates will be forced to look interstate or overseas to complete training if state government funding is not found for up to 50 junior doctor training positions, senior doctors have warned.
The Advertiser has seen a leaked document that expresses “grave concerns” up to a fifth of the state’s Trainee Medical Officer (TMO) internships could go after funding for the “extra” positions, initially created by SA Health to cope with increasing health care needs, ran out this year.
TMO positions include a compulsory year of training (internship) and a year of residency in the public hospital system, following graduation, necessary to gain registration and continue practising in Australia.
The warning was carried in the minutes of the Medical Staff Society, a collection of around 40 of the state’s most prominent doctors. A Society meeting last month heard the government’s decision to discontinue funding for trainee positions would be “very detrimental for the state”.
A senior specialist told The Advertiser 11 of 21 internships at the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) — that includes the Royal Adelaide and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals — have already been lost and some graduates will miss out on intern positions.
“A significant number of these 50 positions across the state have disappeared this year and there is no guarantee any will be left next year,” the doctor, who said they feared for their career, if identified, said.
“Next year and in 2017 there is a far larger cohort of graduates coming out and we won’t have sufficient internships then.
“It may be that graduates won’t be able to find an internship anywhere in Australia.
“I don’t want to panic our medical students — but this is a real risk and why we’re all fighting so hard to maintain these positions.”
The intern shortage has been compounded at CALHN by the loss of federal funding this year that has seen a further 23 training positions slashed.
Doctors say slashing junior training positions is “not cost effective” and will put “greater strain” on an already burdened health sector.
Dr Patricia Montanaro, the immediate past president, AMA (South Australia), said the organisation was “very concerned” up to 50 positions were under threat as some doctors are already effectively stuck in ‘limbo’, unable to progress to the next step of training.
“We understand that the training jobs at risk include prevocational positions not just for interns but also for resident medical officers (RMOs),” Dr Montanaro said.
“Training places are vital, and it can take 5-10 years of training from graduation to become a general practitioner or other specialist.
“With less training places there will be less doctors — an especially dire prospect for country areas, and other areas of need.”
The document seen by The Advertiser reveals: “…junior positions contribute to the current staffing of hospitals and (their loss) will have a major effect on staff workloads and overtime.”
In a statement in response to a series of questions, SA Health confirmed to The Advertiser all 243 commonwealth-supported graduates from medical schools in South Australia who have applied for a position in 2016 will receive an offer. It also said the funding was not being cut but the program had come to the end of its life.
There were 276 internships offered in SA in 2013, 278 in 2014, 254 positions this year, and 247 in 2016.
But while medical students on Commonwealth scholarships are currently guaranteed an internship in Australia, domestic and international full-fee students are not.
Just this week the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) expressed its concern that a “significant number of graduating medical students” in Australia will be unable to find jobs as intern doctors in 2016.
“Medical students at the end of their degree and on the way to graduation should be
congratulated, but there is a subset of students for whom graduation will mean
leaving Australia to find work in other countries,” AMSA President, James Lawler, said.
“A shortage in internships right now is highly indicative of further deficits in the
number of speciality training spaces in the future.”
The nationwide crisis in the number of medical internships is occurring when there has been a rapid increase in medical graduates trained in Australia, rising from 1660 in 2000 to 3484 graduates in 2014.
The “Audit of Applications for 2015 Internship” revealed that in 2014, there were 3676 applicants for medical internships in Australia, but only 3310 available positions.