Regional Medical Specialists Association
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The RMSA aims to secure access of rural-based Australians to quality specialist medical care, close to their homes.
To achieve this aim, we will continue to:
Medical Schools have traditionally been in big cities as part of large, prestigious universities. Entry has been competitive, favouring students from selective schools in metropolitan areas. Post-graduate training is highly regulated and, until recently, accreditation for internships and specialist training positions have been hard for rural and regional hospitals to gain.
As a result, even those students who come from rural areas have spent their late teens and most of their twenties in metropolitan areas. There they have formed friendships, married and commenced families. Understandably they find it difficult to imagine uprooting their lives to move to the country to commence specialist practice when they have finished their training.
People who live in rural Australia know that most rural cities and towns are true communities. New specialists are made to feel very welcome by the entire community and often are invited into community leadership roles quite quickly. Those who have spent their lives in big cities often comment on how easy it is to make interesting friends from all walks of life in rural and regional centres.
Continuing professional development can be an issue, but there are many solutions available. Most important of these are locally-based meetings hosted by the hospital. These also enhance the Clinical Governance of the hospitals themselves and bond the medical team together.
For procedural specialists, observerships and short-term training exchanges can be arranged with city hospitals to develop new skills. Non-procedural specialists have many ways to keep in touch with their peers in other places with physical and video-conferences, on-line courses and of course their regular reading. Almost all specialist medical journals are now delivered electronically, so wherever there is an internet connection there is a medical library.
The RMSA came into being because there is a serious imbalance between metropolitan areas and rural/regional areas in access to medical specialists living and practising locally. For example for Consultant Physicians, 89.1% live and work in Metropolitan areas, whereas 32% of Australians live in non-Metropolitan locations.
Over the years Commonwealth governments have addressed this issue by importing overseas-trained specialists, despite the fact that Australia trains the third highest number of medical practitioners per head of general population in the OECD. The recruiting of specialists from countries which need them more than us also raises serious ethical concerns.
We do not want to be another organisation demanding more money from Government for rural health. Instead we see merit in moving the funding for medical schools and post-graduate training to rural and regional areas. This should be done gradually but purposefully, with the end goal being that one third of medical graduates have trained in rural medical schools and one third of post-graduate training is done in rural areas.
All specialist training programs acknowledge that training should not be done in one institution alone. Rurally-based trainees will need to spend part of their training time in large city hospitals, but metropolitan-based trainees would also benefit from the broader experience and closer medical communities that regional and rural hospitals provide.
The RMSA aims to secure access of rural-based Australians to quality specialist medical care, close to their homes.
To achieve this aim, we will continue to:
The RMSA came into being because there is a serious imbalance between metropolitan areas and rural/regional areas in access to medical specialists living and practising locally. For example for Consultant Physicians, 89.1% live and work in Metropolitan areas, whereas 32% of Australians live in non-Metropolitan locations.
Over the years Commonwealth governments have addressed this issue by importing overseas-trained specialists, despite the fact that Australia trains the third highest number of medical practitioners per head of general population in the OECD. The recruiting of specialists from countries which need them more than us also raises serious ethical concerns.
Medical Schools have traditionally been in big cities as part of large, prestigious universities. Entry has been competitive, favouring students from selective schools in metropolitan areas. Post-graduate training is highly regulated and, until recently, accreditation for internships and specialist training positions have been hard for rural and regional hospitals to gain.
As a result, even those students who come from rural areas have spent their late teens and most of their twenties in metropolitan areas. There they have formed friendships, married and commenced families. Understandably they find it difficult to imagine uprooting their lives to move to the country to commence specialist practice when they have finished their training.
People who live in rural Australia know that most rural cities and towns are true communities. New specialists are made to feel very welcome by the entire community and often are invited into community leadership roles quite quickly. Those who have spent their lives in big cities often comment on how easy it is to make interesting friends from all walks of life in rural and regional centres.
Continuing professional development can be an issue, but there are many solutions available. Most important of these are locally-based meetings hosted by the hospital. These also enhance the Clinical Governance of the hospitals themselves and bond the medical team together.
For procedural specialists, observerships and short-term training exchanges can be arranged with city hospitals to develop new skills. Non-procedural specialists have many ways to keep in touch with their peers in other places with physical and video-conferences, on-line courses and of course their regular reading. Almost all specialist medical journals are now delivered electronically, so wherever there is an internet connection there is a medical library.