The "Med Student Tsunami" and an Invitation.

If you've been living under a rock you might, just MIGHT, have missed the fact that medical student numbers will almost double this decade, but I doubt it. The implications this has for the availability and quality of training places post-graduation is enormous, without adequate clinical experiences in the early postgraduate years the future of Australia's medical workforce is uncertain indeed. The Australian Governments, both state and federal, haven't exactly been forthcoming, at least to students, on specifics of how this "med student tsunami" will be dealt with and how we intend to avoid an NHS like crisis with too many doctors and not enough places. Anyway this bleak little preamble serves to provide context for an invitation I received during the week.

On the 15th of July I'll be attending a forum hosted by IMET in Sydney to discuss "Preparing for a New Generation of Medical Graduates in NSW" for those of you that don't know "The NSW Institute of Medical Education and Training was established by the Minister and Director-General of Health to develop and support medical education and training provided in NSW."So what does that mean? Well it means that they allocate and administer pre-vocational training (internships and RMO1 positions) in NSW, and are responsible for overseeing the quality of such placements.

In attendance will be:

The Director and Deputy Director of IMET;

The Chief Medical officer of the Department of Health and Ageing (Commonwealth), Prof John Horvath who will give an overview of national activity around medical workforce planning and education and training;

Ms Susanne Le Boutellier, Acting Director, Medical Advice & Co-ordination Unit, Queensland Health who will talk about Queensland’s approach to preparing for increasing medical graduates;

Emeritus Professor Louis Landau, PMC, WA talking about Western Australia’s approach to preparing for increasing medical graduates;

Michael Bonning the president of AMSA;

And of course many others.

The forum's not until July but it should reveal some interesting information about a topic which tends to be making student-establishment relations somewhat terse around the country.I'll be sure to write an entry on what exactly I find out. I haven't really been writing much because I'm smack bang in the middle of my exams, and on that note and at this hour (3am) I'd best be off.