A POTENTIAL $45 million investment in medical training programs will do little to address the rural doctor shortage, as both Charles Sturt University (CSU) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) indicate no targets have been set to boost graduates working in the bush.
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The two universities have been locked in a slanging match after CSU head of campus at Wagga, Miriam Dayhew, said the proposed multimillion-dollar Murray Darling Medical School – to be established at the Wagga and Orange campuses – was the most “cost-effective plan before government”, and that “there was no real basis for comparison between the Murray Darling Medical School proposal and the various reform ideas being promoted by a number of city medical schools”.
Yesterday, UNSW rural clinical school head of campus, Dr John Preddy, fired back saying the university had no authority to claim it could provide a better medical training program than what is being delivered by the school, which was established in 2000.
“CSU does not train medical students, I want to know what grounds they think they will be more successful than the current universities,” Dr Preddy said.
Despite being at loggerheads, both universities have failed to make any concrete promises to address the rural doctor shortage, only saying they will work from the “teach them here and they will stay” approach.
Dr Lesley Forster, associate dean of rural health at UNSW, said the institution did not have a target for how many graduates it expected to take rural-based positions; when asked if the clinical school had an independent strategy to address the rural doctor shortage, the only answer given was about short-term placements at facilities like Gundagai multi-purpose hospital.
“We expect as many graduates as possible to settle in regional areas,” Dr Forster said.
Mark Burdack, CSU director of corporate affairs, said the medical school will have an 80 per cent rural entry target, but it will not have a specific target set for graduates taking up rural-based positions.
Dr Preddy said the rural clinical school was ready to rollout a six-year training program – subject to government approval – and claimed a new CSU-run facility would not start delivering graduates for at least another 10 years, given as a conservative estimate.
“Our program is ranked in the top 40 medical schools globally,” Dr Preddy said.
“Seventeen of our graduates are working at Wagga Base Hospital.”
