THE University of Sydney’s School of Rural Health has struck back at claims made by federal Member for Calare Andrew Gee that the school had taken a “predatory” approach to training a medical workforce.
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In updating Parliament last month on the proposed Murray Darling Medical School, Mr Gee said he was disappointed that city-based universities had taken an “unnecessarily predatory and negative approach … on this issue”, and were trying “to kill the Charles Sturt University proposal”.
“Less than 10 per cent of medical students trained at the big city universities go on to practice medicine in the country,” he said.
“The universities running the current system are failing country Australia.”
Head of the School of Rural Health, Associate Professor Mark Arnold, said the “predatory” label wasn’t “reflective of our involvement”.
From 2004 to the end of 2017, more than 800 medical students would have graduated from the School of Rural Health after doing “extended medical placements”, he said.
“We’ve been a net employer in the region,” he said.
Dr Arnold, who is also a rheumatologist working in Dubbo, Orange and Gloucester, said better post-graduate pathways, and not more medical students, were the key.
“The federal government’s move to establish independent Rural Training Hubs and other pathways are very welcome, it’s just that that is only really the first step in establishing a training pathway to allow students to convert their intention into reality,” he said.
“Once a medical student graduates they have to do a year of supervised practice in hospital and they enter into a vocational training program to become a specialist GP or other specialist in year three.
“The necessity is for medical students, after graduation, to be able to train in a rural setting, so there needs to be a programmatic change so students can be trained to become doctors capable of independent practice.”
On Monday, Mr Gee said he stood by all his comments regarding the University of Sydney, and other big medical schools.
“The cold, hard truth is training overseas students in Australia is a nice little earner for them and they want to keep the closed shop closed,” Mr Gee said in a statement.
“The current system has been excellent at training doctors for practice in the city, but has been an abject failure for training doctors in the bush.
“The big universities have been at it for years, but the lack of results speak for themselves. It’s time to try something new.”