It was announced this week by RMSA president Dr Peter Hughes that the fourth annual conference will be held in Wagga Saturday, May 28, convened by Dr Stephenson.

"It's been a long time coming, but it's essential, it's a key step in getting the required government and bureaucratic, university and medical college support so there is more training of doctors in rural areas so that in years to come we won't have the workforce crisis that we have now," Dr Stephenson said.

The conference will address issues needed to be overcome for regional Australia to secure access to quality specialist medical care.

The conference will address needs highlighted by the RMSA which include more medical specialists living and working in the regional 'capitals' and larger rural towns, as well as visiting, supporting, helping educate and mentoring the many primary care doctors and other health workers who live and work in smaller settlements.

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In attendance will be Minister Bronnie Taylor, NSW Minister for Regional Health as will other leading lights of the battle to improve rural health services.

Professor Jenny May, who is the Director of the Department of Rural Health in the University of Newcastle, will also be a keynote speaker.

"There's still a long way to go and there's still more people to convince and there's still an established metropolitan power bases that still need to be tackled to make sure there's more and better training regionally there's still not nearly enough, so this is one step in the path in helping to make it happen," Dr Stephenson said.

"It's a very important conference in terms of laying out the evidence base and the pathway by which it may happen."

Dr Stephenson said we need to be training a lot more people in the future generations to fix the existing gap.

"In the meantime we need to be ensuring we are doing what needs to be done to maintain the ones who are currently locally resident in regional Australia," he said.

"And getting the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders is also incredibly important."

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