Professor Ian Wronski says CDU’s medical school to be world leading in remote education and training

A renowned Australian academic and clinician, tasked with helping to bring CDU’s medical school to life, says the institution could become world-leading in remote education.

CHARLES Darwin University’s new medical school has the potential to become the world leader in creating pathways, training and graduating people from remote communities as doctors, according to one of the professionals tasked with bringing the institution to life.

Earlier this year Professor Ian Wronski was appointed CDU Deputy Vice-Chancellor Northern Australia Medical and Health Development.

He was previously the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Division of Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University, as part of his role developing Australia’s first new medical school in 25 years in 2000.

As part of his role, Prof Wronski will consider options for how CDU can evolve more medical training in the NT and build the capacity of other health-related courses, services and capabilities.

Professor Ian Wronski. Picture: Evan Morgan

In an interview with the NT News, Prof Wronski said the development of school would afford an extreme amount of social and economic benefits, as well as medical.

“What we’ve seen certainly North Queensland and other places is once you produce medical and health workforce, the health system expands a lot,” he said.

“The Territory at the moment has a health system strangulated by lack of workforce supply.

“CDU really needs to evolve by medical and health workforce strategy to provide the personnel so that the health system can grow and so that people can get real access to services, and the growth resulting from this into the Northern Territory economy will be very substantial.

“The human services workforce has been the fastest growing section of the Australian economy for the last 15 years. And before Covid was slated to be the fastest growing section of the Australian economy for the next 15 years.

“Then there’s jobs for the kids. It creates lots of skilled jobs, in big institutions and in remote communities where people can develop careers, get reasonable salaries in secure positions.

“That has a tremendous impact not only on the kids but their friends, the peer effect and then their kids … It’s changing their socio-economic status.”

Prof Wronski said one of the most critical parts in developing the school would be securing medical places from the Commonwealth Government, with CDU currently asking for 40.

“It’s (school) got potential to be of dramatic interest to the world,” Prof Wronski said.

“What’s different about the Territory is how you create pathways for lots of remote kids.

“What the Territory ought to be famous for is creating, finding pathways and successfully training people from remote communities and finding ways of preparing them for medical school and get them to graduate as quality doctors.”

CDU Vice-Chancellor Scott Bowman added the current Covid crisis in remote communities showed how critical it was for the NT to be equipped to meet health needs.

“We need these places and our own medical program so that we have a medical curriculum that is NT specific, that meets the health workforce needs of the Territory,” he said.