Stop poaching doctors from poor countries
I’m not sure about the desirability or sustainability of Australia poaching doctors from poor countries to fill vacancies in our depleted medical workforce.
The “great brain drain” it’s known as around the world. The United Kingdom, United States and other affluent nations also recruit third world doctors.
In Australia, more than 10 percent of the medical workforce is made up of foreign-trained doctors, most of them from Asia.
The countries these doctors come from are some of the poorest in the world with some of the sickest people.
I don’t blame the doctors for wanting a better life, but moral and ethical questions about removing them from their home environment have to be asked.
Is it anyone’s fault except our own that we don’t have enough doctors? I don’t think so.
While a few of the demographic trends may have surprised some people, most of them could have been anticipated, especially the rising population and a drift to coastal areas.
Perhaps the changing lifestyle expectations of many new doctors could not as easily been predicted, but it’s a reality than many GPs don’t want to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Many young female doctors only want to work part time.
The best solution is that Australia should train more doctors, more surgeons, more psychiatrists and more specialists.
If that means lowering the university entry score or introducing a more diversified selection procedure, so be it.
Some year 12 students who didn’t finish in the top five percent of their classes might make excellent doctors.
Why not introduce a shortened training course for experienced nurses to become general practitioners?
I sense the medical establishment has been somewhat stuffy and insular, also slow to recognise the problems developing around them.
Things probably don’t look so bad from a window in East Melbourne or with a view of Sydney Harbour.
We need to be innovative in how we train the doctors of tomorrow.
It’s a short-term answer to pluck doctors out of the world’s poorest countries to work in our remote rural areas and depressed outer suburbs.
It also undermines the nation-building efforts of other countries.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
