Reform momentum continues at medical students’ meeting

Healthcare leaders have re-affirmed their commitment to ‘substantial and deep structural’ reforms aimed at increasing Australia’s GP numbers at a recent Australian Medicals Students Association (AMSA) meeting, RACGP President Adjunct Professor Karen Price has said.

The meeting, attended by healthcare leaders including Federal Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler as well as his opposition counterpart Anne Ruston, focused on how to reverse the decline in medical school graduates intending to specialise in general practice. 

Professor Price told newsGP there is a need to ‘undo’ much of what has been done over the past 10–20 years, and that the meeting is a further sign that the Federal Government is looking for ‘workable solutions’.

‘There’s a real sense of the need for change,’ she said. ‘There is a sense of crisis. And there is a sense that everyone wants to work together to do this [reform].’

Prior to the meeting, Minister Butler again acknowledged that there is a fundamental need to strengthen Medicare, but also told reporters it was important to speak directly with medical students to understand what could ‘shift the dial’ as they weigh up career choices.

‘Why are so few of them choosing a general practice? I mean, I can make my educated guesses after reading briefs and talking to the heads of professionals, but it’s important that we talk to young people [as well],’ he said.

‘Fundamentally, I think it is about the level of respect that governments have been showing for general practice … we’ve got to put more money and more respect into Medicare.’

In addition to reducing the specialty pay gap, which Minister Butler said was exacerbated by the Medicare freeze, he also said there are ‘basic things’ that could be introduced to help make general practice a more attractive career choice for medial graduates.

‘GPs in training currently need to move through multiple employers during their period of six years of training, so they find it difficult to accrue leave [and] they particularly find it difficult to accrue parental leave,’ he said.

‘So, can we make sure some of those industrial barriers are resolved?’

For AMSA President Jasmine Davis, the ‘critical importance’ of GPs means that both short-term and long-term solutions need to be investigated and put in place.

‘Students can see the strife GPs are in trying to run a private practice with a shrinking Medicare rebate and more and more complex patient conditions,’ she said.

‘However, we can’t leave the GP medical graduate issue to be hopefully turned around with long-term reform of general practice funding, which is now recognised as a priority – we must look at what can be done in our medical schools now.

‘I am intending to go into rural general practice myself, because I see it as an incredibly rewarding career option. But I know it’s going to be tough, and with few students wanting to join me in this career I am concerned about the future.

‘Now is the time to address the reluctance to enter general practice.’

In the roundtable that followed, Professor Price said there was a lot of discussion around avoiding the mistakes of the past, with numerous people citing the decision to defund the Prevocational General Practice Placement Program (PGPPP) as an example.

‘AMSA will put together the thoughts from the workshopping today, and I’m sure much of that will probably complement what the summit will produce,’ she said. 

‘It will come down to the money, of course. But like I’ve said before, it’s ridiculous to say you can’t afford general practice, because we can’t afford for it to fail.

‘We can’t just keep on tinkering around the edges.’ 

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