The first cohort of Dubbo’s yet-to-be-named graduate medical school will likely be Dubbo region health professionals who have faced barriers to becoming doctors.
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The University of Sydney’s School of Rural Health is already fielding inquiries from the likes of nurses and physiotherapists as it makes plans for the school.
Interest is likely to escalate after federal Minister for Regional Services and Decentralisation Senator Bridget McKenzie paid a visit to the School of Rural Health on Friday.
The senator announced that the federal government was giving the School of Rural Health $7.65 million to redevelop existing premises and construct a new building on nearby vacant land that will house a state-of-the-art anatomy and basic sciences facility.
Work is expected to be under way by March as part of a push to open the school to its first 24 students in 2021.
When operating at full capacity, the school will have 96 students based in Dubbo.
The University of Sydney is among five universities with campuses in the Murray-Darling region of NSW and Victoria which are establishing a network of medical schools with current funding of $74 million from the federal government.
Senator McKenzie said the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network, which will accept about 140 students each year, is based on research showing 70 to 75 per cent of them will stay in the bush.
She was greeted by a small crowd at the School of Rural Health including federal Member for Parkes Mark Coulton, The Nationals’ candidate for the seat of Dubbo Dugald Saunders and the School of Rural Health’s Head of School, Associate Professor Dr Mark Arnold.
Dr Arnold provided advice on the school’s first intake.
“Well the average students that you’ll see coming through here in the first cohort are likely to be people who are healthcare professionals currently working in the area,” he said.
“Remember, ours is a graduate program. You can’t enter straight from school.
“So we’re focusing on people who have always had an interest to practise medicine and they just haven’t had the opportunity because they have had to move not only themselves but also their families.
“They are an untapped resource of people to come into our program.”
Dr Arnold said competition for students from another medical school to be set up and run by Charles Sturt University and Western Sydney University at Orange could eventually lead to the Dubbo school taking people from “all over rural Australia”.
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“Our proposal actually specifically focuses on the vast majority if not the absolute totality of our students being rural,” he said.
