Reports and Statements

This Position Paper sets out Medical Deans’ vision to build and realise interest for medical careers in and with remote, rural and regional communities, and the conditions required to maintain this interest over the long term.

Access to a well-resourced medical workforce is key to ensuring remote, rural and regional communities receive equitable healthcare. Despite ongoing investment and innovation in rural medical education in Australia and New Zealand, access to medical practitioners still decreases as remoteness increases. In this paper, we recommend reforms to increase the appeal to medical students and junior doctors for a rewarding career practising in remote, rural and regional areas. These reforms need to account for the entire training continuum, from entry into medical school, prevocational and vocational training, to post-fellowship opportunities. 

Central to these recommendations is the need for reform to be place-based: driven by the people, needs and advantages of the local community. This paper calls for an increase in flexibility to support local communities to deliver training and opportunities. This paper also recognises the need for vibrant rural communities, and calls for ongoing investment to maintain thriving rural areas, in partnership with local communities.

Medical programs operate in a unique space in terms of BDH, as they span both higher education and the health system. A whole-of-program approach must consider campus learning environments as well as the clinical learning environments where many of those teaching students are employees of health services, not universities.

Central university policies and procedures on BDH are developed for students across all disciplines, but the research tells us that most of the BDH experienced by medical students occurs during clinical training. This guide is a complementary resource, bringing together a range of information and advice specifically relevant for medical schools (and other health professional programs).

This Position Paper sets out Medical Deans’ vision for how medical education and training can contribute to building, sustaining and supporting the General Practice workforce in Australia and New Zealand, and how to realise this vision.

The GP shortages across Australia and New Zealand are being widely felt and projected to worsen. Growing this vital medical workforce is key to meet the healthcare needs of our communities. In this paper we recommend reforms to increase the appeal to medical students and junior doctors of a career as a GP specialist, better prepare them for careers in primary care settings, and ensure all medical graduates have a strong understanding and positive experience of the challenges and rewards of General Practice.

Our recommendations consider all stages of the medical education and training continuum, from recruitment into medical school, learning for and about General Practice, learning in General Practice, progressing to practice, and the General Practice profession. We also need to build the research and the evidence base into graduates’ choice of medical vocation, and the primary care environment and context in both countries.

The Medical Deans’ Student and Staff Committee has developed a Postvention Consensus Statement to support our member schools in planning a proactive and appropriate response in case of a traumatic event such as the death or attempted suicide of a student or staff member. The framing principles in the Consensus Statement are intended for use in conjunction with the more detailed planning advice available in existing good practice postvention guides.

Medical Deans and AIDA re-affirm their long-standing collaboration and shared commitment to First Nations health and growing the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical graduates.

The Research Committee of Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand is pleased to publish a second series of case studies of good practice in research in the curriculum in our member medical schools. This year we had a strong focus on research programs in rural and regional areas – three of the six case studies illustrate how medical schools are facilitating student research projects in rural and regional communities, and the mutual benefits for students and communities that these programs are producing.

The Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand (Medical Deans) Indigenous Health Strategy 2021-2025 (the Strategy) expresses the strong commitment of Medical Deans and medical schools in Australia and New Zealand to equitable health outcomes for Indigenous people, through medical education and medical workforce development.

Medical Deans recognises the substantial and unacceptable inequity in health and social outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Māori. These are a legacy of colonisation, dispossession and marginalisation, and are manifest in the social and environmental determinants of health, including education, employment, income, and personal and community agency. Institutional racism and implicit biases persist in society more broadly, as well as in medical education, by health professionals, and within systems of health care; and Medical Deans individually and as a collective are committed to playing an active role to stamp out these biases and behaviours.

We also recognise the strengths and resilience of Indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand and the value of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, culture and traditions. We are committed to shifting the discourse from a deficit model – which itself causes harm – to one based on strengths and self-determination. We are committed to working in partnership with, and being guided by, Indigenous leaders, organisations, communities and individuals, on our thinking and our work.

This Discussion Paper sets out Medical Deans’ 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 New Zealand.  

As our populations’ health needs change, so too must our models and settings of care and how we train our future doctors. We need a greater focus on generalist skills, teamwork, preventive and long-term care, and working across traditional care boundaries. We need to teach skills and build experience in adapting to ongoing disruption and innovation. We need students and graduates learning in and for our communities, in an education and training system that actively supports paths to careers in the regions and specialties where they’re most needed. Underpinning all of this we need a healthy workplace environment, with embedded systems that safeguard patient care and the health of students and doctors. 

In this paper we layout our ideas and recommendations to support this much-needed shift. We seek to engage and partner with health services, student associations, medical colleges, regulators, representative bodies, and Australian and New Zealand governments to share and progress these ideas, and co-develop a medical education and training continuum that can better meet the future health needs of our populations and better support our future doctors.