Developing our Future Doctors

In our 2021 discussion paper, Training Tomorrow’s Doctors, we share our vision for a medical education and training continuum that leads to an adaptable and supported workforce with the required capabilities, and in the right numbers, right places, and right specialties to serve the needs of the people of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

A career in medicine opens up opportunities in a wide range of fields and disciplines, including teaching, research and leadership. While the remit of medical schools is the development of high-quality, work-ready, adaptable and patient-focused graduates able to progress into any field of medicine, it is recognised that in both countries there are particular shortages of:

First Nations doctors
General practitioners
Doctors practicing in remote, rural and regional areas
Clinician educators and clinician researchers, and
Mental health clinicians.

Medical Deans is developing action-oriented recommendations informed by data and experience, for medical schools and other stakeholders involved across the training continuum, to improve the medical workforce outcomes our communities need. Fundamentally, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand needs to:

Expand professional entry medical training places, to invest in developing the doctors we need
Invest in the primary care sector as a high quality ‘teaching, training and research system’
Scale up intern and junior doctor posts in primary care and rural locations, aligned to the boost in graduate supply
Establish integrated place-based health training collaboratives

Informed by Data

Data from our annual survey of medical graduates is available on our data dashboard and provides information on graduates’ backgrounds, experiences and preferences. By linking this data with the medical registration data, we can also see how some of these intentions play out after internship and fellowship.

Some of the findings from the most recent data are that:

38% of respondents stated a preference for a career working outside a capital city
when combined with its sub-specialty of rural generalism, general practice is the most preferred future specialty (at 19%)
consistently over the years, two factors rank the highest in terms of factors that influence graduates’ thinking about future careers – “Alignment with personal values” and “Atmosphere/work culture”

By looking at the 2022 medical registration data for those 2012 graduates, we can see that:

46% had not yet registered as a specialist
of those whose first preference was to be a GP, 73% were working as a GP
28% of the 2012 graduates were registered as a GP specialist; of these, two-thirds did not have GP as their first preference when graduating medical school