ACRRM President attends Australian-first Rural Medical Specialist Summit

ACRRM President Associate Professor Ewen McPhee attended an Australian-first summit to address the rural medical specialist shortage this week, bringing the College’s 20-plus years of experience training doctors to work and stay in rural and remote areas to the conversation.

Chaired by Minister for Regional Services Bridget McKenzie, the summit brought together university leaders, medical specialists and health industry representatives to focus on boosting the number of specialists working in rural and remote regions and improving training pathways for rural specialists.

A/Prof McPhee says the summit, held in Melbourne, was a great opportunity to bring rural communities to the forefront of discussions around specialties with overwhelmingly urban-based workforces.

“The summit recognised that graduates can access quality training in the regions and ACRRM’s work is proof of the success of this approach,” A/Prof McPhee said. 

“We need to ensure that people who want to work regionally have access to the specialist training in the communities they service, to enable them to continue to work in the regions they want to live in, and to meet health care needs.

“The ACRRM model of rurally-focussed and rurally-based training works, with 75 per cent of ACRRM-trained Fellows remaining in rural areas five years after attaining their Fellowship.

“We need to make sure that positions doctors hold in regional hospitals become training positions, so that we keep our best specialists in rural and remote areas.

“The challenge for the Federal Government will be to ensure the money it invests translates to long-term doctors in the bush.

“The College has been advocating for many years that rural specialist training works collaboratively with the Rural Generalist training programs that are already well-established in rural and remote areas across the country.

“Rural training resources are limited and there are great opportunities for collaboration and partnership particularly in delivery of training in advanced skill areas such as anaesthetics, obstetrics and mental health in which many Rural Generalists also train.

“The summit was an excellent opportunity for robust and productive discussion, and as Australia’s leading rural training college we were pleased to be able to bring our knowledge and experience to the table,” A/Prof McPhee said.

Minister McKenzie will report on feedback from the summit to the Council of Australian Government (COAG) meeting early next year.

About ACRRM

The Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine is the only College in Australia entirely dedicated to training and supporting doctors to serve rural and remote communities.

For more than 20 years, we have delivered high-quality training and professional development to doctors in rural areas, in fields including anaesthetics, obstetrics, emergency medicine and mental health.