News
Students Not The Cause Of Queensland’s Health Crisis |
| Spokesperson: | AMA Queensland |
| Date: | Monday, 10 April 2006 |
| Category: | State Health News |
| AMA Queensland warned further increases in medical student numbers were not the answer to Queensland’s health crisis. AMA Queensland President-elect Dr Zelle Hodge said by continuing to call for further medical student places Queensland Premier Peter Beattie was skating around the real issues. “Queensland Health’s culture and the inadequate provision of bed numbers in its hospitals have greatly contributed to the doctor shortage in this State,” Dr Hodge said. “The Premier has admitted it was on his watch as health minister that the decision was made to cut the number of hospital beds in Queensland. “No beds for patients means no patient care, medical or surgical or otherwise, and no opportunity for young doctors to be given training in that patient care,” she said. Dr Hodge said Queensland Health’s culture of bullying and intimidation had also driven senior doctors, who provide much of the training for junior doctors, out of the public system. “Medical graduates require apprenticeship training after they have graduated but this requires trainers and training opportunities,” she said. AMA Queensland said the State now had four medical schools that by 2009 will have doubled the number of doctors entering the workforce. “Queensland Health needs to make sure the doubled number of medical students in the system now are able to be trained properly,” Dr Hodge said. “Health is an incendiary issue for governments and as such we have a history of knee-jerk reactions. “In response to a Medicare ‘blow-out’, successive Labor and Liberal federal governments restricted medical student places in the early nineties,” she said. “That history often repeats is something governments seem to have difficulty comprehending - or rather choose to ignore - in their hurry to address political 'hot potatoes' rather than make sensible health policy decisions. “We need to build up our medical student numbers incrementally, so that we can be certain the infrastructure is there to train doctors properly – not restrict or increase numbers on a whim,” Dr Hodge said. |
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