The NSW Medical Students’ Council’s “no new medical schools” policy doesn’t faze campaigners for the establishment of the proposed Murray Darling Medical School (MDMS) .
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The council’s continuing lament that new medical schools will not address a shortage of rural medical practitioners but contribute to an oversupply of medical graduates has not challenged the resolve of MDMS proponents.
“They have made their position clear for a long time,” Peter Fraser, Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) director of government and community relations, told the Daily Liberal.
“We disagree with it,” he said.
“What the MDMS is all about is ensuring we turn local kids into local doctors, ensuring they are trained in the bush, understand the needs of our communities and stay in the bush.”
The proposed school, with campuses in Orange, Wagga-Wagga and Bendigo, is a joint project of CSU and La Trobe University.
They have secured the support of members of the Nationals who Mr Fraser said were “advocating on our behalf to ensure that our voice is heard in Canberra”.
On Monday the council raised its “extreme concerns” that the federal government was considering funding “another new medical school” as the doors of Macquarie University’s controversial full-fee medical school opened for the first time in Sydney.
In a statement, president Liam Mason said establishing a new medical school was “not the most effective way to use taxpayer’s money”.
“Increased medical student numbers will not increase the amount of much-needed rural doctors, until the current medical graduates numbers are met with the necessary infrastructure for increased internship and specialist training places, including general practitioner training places,” he said.
Mr Fraser said in 2017 PPB Advisory conducted an “independent assessment” of the MDMS proposal.
“They found that a dedicated rural and regional medical school would be three to five times more efficient from a taxpayer dollar perspective in training doctors in the bush because this is all about training local kids into local doctors,” he said.
He pointed to the success of CSU’s dentistry and pharmacy programs in training people “in our communities, who stay in our communities and work in our communities”.
Mr Fraser said a review launched by the former Assistant Minister for Rural Health Dr David Gillespie was looking into the “malapportionment of medical places between metropolitan areas and rural and regional areas”.
