JAMES Cook University (JCU) medical students are helping to address bush doctor shortages, with graduates from regional and remote areas preferring to ‘go rural’, compared to their city counterparts.
The JCU medical school has analysed the location of its 536 graduates from 2005-2011, and the results are promising for a northern health workforce short in supply and high in demand.
Research published in the Rural and Remote Health journal shows JCU graduates from non-metropolitan backgrounds were much more likely to practice in rural and regional Australia than graduates from other medical schools.
Using information from JCU, the Medical Schools Outcomes Database and graduates themselves to track graduate intentions and destinations, the study is the first of its kind in Australia.
Director of Medical Education, Professor Tarun Sen Gupta, who co-authored the study, said the hometown of JCU graduates and where they practice had a very different pattern to other Australian medical graduates.
Professor Sen Gupta said 69 per cent of graduates from non-metropolitan backgrounds completed their internship year in a rural or regional hospital.
“What we’re showing with this data is that our medical school’s rural and regional focus, from student selection to teaching and clinical placements right through the course, is paying off in terms of outcomes for rural Australia,” he said.
“This study has high enough numbers from seven cohorts of students to confirm previous findings that a medical graduate is more likely to practice rurally if they come from a rural background.
“With the majority of our 536 graduates choosing to work outside major cities it is a real positive step for improving the workforce shortages and distribution of doctors in rural Australia.”
Specialty training in general practice was favoured by 48pc of more than 200 graduates from the first four cohorts, with 27 doctors choosing the rural and remote stream of general practice training.
Professor Sen Gupta said the pattern of JCU graduate destinations on completion of their studies compared to graduates of other Australian universities was another important difference.
“Graduates of other universities have a different pattern to ours, because they are less likely to not only say they will work in rural areas but also to actually work in rural areas.
“Our study is different to other studies that only focus on a student’s intentions after graduation – we are showing what they actually do.”
Professor Sen Gupta said the study supported the JCU model of distributed regional medical education and suggested more regional internship and specialty training places would further increase the medical workforce in northern and rural Australia.
“The workforce impact of the seven cohorts of graduates in this study is starting to be felt in rural and regional Australia, and if these trends continue there will be significant workforce improvements over the next decade.”
He said graduates of a city background who did their internships in regional hospitals were more unpredictable in their choice of location after their internships, with several spending more time in non-metropolitan centres after their internship year.