Curtin Opening New Medical School

[chasej]

Yup - problem is that will people be able to get a job afterwards? Getting into medicine is one thing, getting a job is another...and we can't indefinitely give more people the chance to do medicine because the real problem is at the job level...

If you look outside of major cities you would see there is a pretty big shortage of doctors.

[pi]

If you look outside of major cities you would see there is a pretty big shortage of doctors.

I hear that there aren't any more places to put training spots into those rural areas. And training spaces is what Thushan refers to by "jobs" as that's what graduating medical students go into.

[thushan]

That's viable, but I doubt those unis would agree to it that simply It's much easier to not have another med school than cut back from the rest of them just to open a new one that might not even help have more grads in rural areas.

Actually, that is a good idea. Each uni can cut back, keep a sizeable amount of international students (I assume the universities get more funding from int students than CSP + gvt money) and that way when there ARE more training positions they have the capacity to increase their intake in the future.

Also, that would increase the quality of education, having fewer students per university.

[Tomw2]

If you look outside of major cities you would see there is a pretty big shortage of doctors.

In the discourse surrounding these issues there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of how doctors are trained. There's also a tendency to oversimplify the maldistribution of doctors in different geographical settings.

Right now, the real 'crisis' is the lack of infrastructure that can support the development of med grads into professionals who are not dangerous with a prescription pad or scalpel. And beyond.

[pi]

http://med.unsw.edu.au/news/australia%E2%80%99s-first-undergraduate-md#.UhIMv5Lvim7

and this

http://www.6minutes.com.au/getmedia/12194872-9e50-436b-91db-9555eb3eda8b/19_08_13.aspx?ext=.pdf&nodeid=2824517

[Professor Polonsky]

This has to rank quite highly as one of the most radical and revolutionary changes in university med.

[pi]

This has to rank quite highly as one of the most radical and revolutionary changes in university med.

It's certainly created a debate among many, shall be interesting to see what pans out

[Russ]

Also known as "we saw the other university doing it, we don't want to be left out"

[pi]

Worth reading if you're interested in this issue http://www.smh.com.au/comment/new-medical-schools-dont-stack-up-for-rural-australia-20130930-2und0.html