The government spends billions trying to diversify medical students, but it lets those same students slip through the cracks.
Despite talking the talk on investing in medical student diversity, the commonwealth is failing to make medical training accessible to students from rural and lower socio-economic backgrounds, the Australian Medical Students Association says.
Independent members of parliament Dr Helen Haines and David Pocock are putting renewed pressure on the government to expand its commonwealth prac payment scheme to include medical and allied health students.
On Monday, the pair launched a new parliamentary petition, arguing that at a time of “urgent health workforce shortage” financial barriers should not prevent or delay students from completing health degrees.
Currently, the prac payment scheme pays teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students $338.60 per week while they are undertaking a mandatory placement in a bachelor’s or master’s degree.
Nursing students typically complete around 800 hours of prac, while teaching students complete closer to 700 hours.
Medical students, who are not eligible for the payment, complete up to 2000 hours of unpaid mandatory placements.
“It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, where if you deny new medical students the support because you imagine they’re from [well-off] families, the students who aren’t [from that background] are going to struggle, and they’re going to drop out,” AMSA president Seniru Mudannayake told The Medical Republic.
“And unfortunately, the doctors that we’re missing out on are [the same ones that] those rural, Indigenous and lower socio-economic communities so desperately need.
“I’m from a low socio-economic background and a lot of my peers that I talk to as well feel [similarly] … that we can’t go back to our communities and recommend this degree to people who grew up where we grew up.
“… At the end of the day, the support that should be there to get us through just isn’t.”
With the current inclusions of teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work, the prac payment program costs $427.4 million over four years.
According to a Parliamentary Budget Office estimate prepared at the behest of Dr Haines and Mr Pocock, expanding the scheme to include medical students and all allied health students would cost an extra $290 million over four years.
Eligible allied health professions included in the estimate were chiropractors, dietitians, occupational therapists, osteopaths, paramedicine practitioners, physiotherapists, psychologists and speech pathologists.
Related
Mr Mudannayake, who intends to pursue a career in rural generalist paediatrics, pointed out that – when compared to the money already invested in establishing rural medical schools and recruiting greater numbers of rural origin students – $290 million to ensure those same students could finish their degree was a relatively modest sum.
“We spend many times that number in [hiring] locum doctors to go to these rural areas, Indigenous communities and low socio-economic areas, to serve those communities,” he said.
“But we have medical students willing to do that as soon as they graduate, if they’re given the chance to actually get through their degrees and to get through, importantly, without falling into serious mental strife.”
The AMSA president and fifth-year Monash University medical student said he was aware of other students who had resorted to eating leftover meals intended for patients or living out of their car while on placement.
“I think the worst part of that for these students is that there’s this great shame and there’s this great class divide that comes about,” Mr Mudannayake said.
“You really want to serve your community, and you really want to be proud of where you’re from, but if where you’re from is resulting in you being homeless while trying to do a medical degree – well, it’s a burden that’s often too great to bear.”
Dr Haines’ petition is available to sign here.
