The University of Sydney’s School of Rural Health has struck back at claims made by Federal Member for Calare Andrew Gee that the school had taken a “predatory” approach to training a medical workforce.
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Last month Mr Gee updated Parliament on the proposed Murray Darling Medical School, expressing his disappointment that city-based universities had taken an “unnecessarily predatory and negative approach … on this issue”.
He said they were “active[ly] try[ing] to kill the Charles Sturt University proposal”.
“Less than 10 per cent of medical students trained at the big city universities go on to practice medicine in the country,” Mr Gee told Parliament in May.
“The universities running the current system are failing country Australia.”
Head of the School of Rural Health, Associate Professor Mark Arnold, said he couldn’t explain what had prompted Mr Gee’s comments.
He said they were an inaccurate reflection of the school’s work in the Central West.
“That is not really a question I can answer on his [Mr Gee’s] behalf but characterising our involvement in the Central West as ‘predatory’ I think isn’t reflective of our involvement,” Dr Arnold said.
From 2004 to the end of 2017, more than 800 medical students would have graduated from the School of Rural after doing “extended medical placements”, he said.
Dr Arnold, who is also a rheumatologist working in Dubbo, Orange and Gloucester, said better post-graduate pathways, and not more medical students, were the key to solving Australia’s rural doctor shortage.
“The federal government’s move to establish independent Rural Training Hubs and other pathways are very welcome, it’s just that that is only really the first step in establishing a training pathway to allow students to convert their intention into reality,” Dr Arnold said.
“Once a medical student graduates they have to do a year of supervised practice in hospital and they enter into a vocational training program to become a specialist GP or other specialist in year three.”
On Monday Mr Gee said he stood by all of his comments regarding the University of Sydney, and other big medical schools.
“The cold hard truth is training overseas students in Australia is a nice little earner for them and they want to keep the closed shop closed,” Mr Gee said in a statement.
“The current system has been excellent at training doctors for practice in the city, but has been an abject failure for training doctors in the bush.
“The big universities have been at it for years, but the lack of results speak for themselves. It’s time to try something new.”
