Rural health faces ‘double whammy’ from interstate loss
The Rural Doctors Association of South Australia is continuing its long-time push for a rural generalist training pathway, with the state’s junior doctors heading interstate.
Rural health in South Australia is facing a ‘double whammy’ of not having enough junior doctors produced to cover posts in country areas, but also losing those training here to interstate.
This was one of the major issues raised at the Rural Doctors Association of South Australia annual conference held in Adelaide over the weekend.
Association president and Murray Bridge doctor Peter Rischbieth said a rural generalist training pathway was crucial to entice more junior doctors to become the practitioners so desperately needed in rural and remote SA.
“Nationally there has been a big drop in junior doctors applying to undertake GP training, but SA is also falling behind states like Queensland and New South Wales when it comes to offering a well-supported generalist training pathway” Dr Rischbieth said.
“This is creating a double-whammy, where we are losing junior doctors — some of whom want to become our future rural doctors — to other states, because they can access the training they need there.”
Dr Rischbieth said without the rural generalist training pathway, South Australia would struggle to attract the right doctors with the right skills to provide high quality medical services across rural areas of the state.
“There is also an equally important need to support the GP supervisors and hospitals involved in rural doctor training in SA, both in metropolitan and rural areas,” he said.
University of Adelaide Rural Clinical School director Lucie Walters said the school provided hands-on training to medical students in a range of rural areas.
“We’ve found that 97 per cent of the students who spend a year in a rural area report an increased interest in rural and remote practice,” she said.
”We know that 21 per cent of the people who have gone through the program in the last decade are now out there working in rural practice, which is a much better percentage than if they didn’t have that experience.
“But, as South Australia has not historically had a rural generalist training pathway, we have found quite a large percentage of those working in rural areas are doing so in other states, not in SA.
“Of the 365 people who have come through our rural cohort program, 32 are working in rural SA, and 43 are working in rural areas outside of the state.”
State health minister Stephen Wade, who officially opened the association’s conference on Saturday, believes the state government’s draft Rural Medical Workforce Plan will address many of the issues facing the rural health sector. The plan is part of the state government’s $20 million investment across four years in the rural health force.
Consultation on the plan opened at the end of July and closes on September 30.