Why the AMA wants to see an end to the 10-year moratorium for internationally trained doctors.
Racism is causing overseas trained doctors to leave some communities or even change careers, AMA leadership told the inquiry into the value of skilled migration to Australia today.
Speaking at a Canberra hearing on Friday morning, AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen said racism and discrimination was “costing us doctors”.
“We’ve heard accounts of doctors leaving the profession entirely, and certainly [of doctors] moving roles because of racism,” she said.
“Either on the part of patients – although, often in rural communities, our patient groups really are welcoming of anyone who’s helping be part of the community and support their care – but sometimes from colleagues, administrative bodies, or a broader, deep-set kind of culture of racism and discrimination.”
Dr McMullen said she had been shocked at how many calls from patients requesting a “doctor who speaks English” came through to her own, outer-metropolitan Brisbane practice.
“That’s not an appropriate question – all of our doctors speak English, and they’re all brilliant,” she said.
Because their visas were often tied to their employment status, international medical graduates often had very few avenues to turn to if they experienced discrimination at work.
“If they’re not being treated fairly, justly, and appropriately, they feel trapped by their visa conditions,” Dr McMullen said.
“And so that’s what led to one of our recommendations around decoupling some of those visa requirements or enabling more job flexibility or role flexibility within visa requirements, so that if a doctor is in an unsafe work environment, they’re able to report and move and maintain their safety without threatening their visa.”
Adding weight to the argument for a system change, Dr McMullen said, was the fact that the DPA system was now diluted to an extreme; almost everywhere bar inner metropolitan suburbs were now able to attract internationally trained doctors working through their 10-year moratorium.
“We do think there needs to be an unwinding of the 10-year moratorium and more targeted, fit-for-purpose recruitment and retention tools with incentives and supports to attract and retain both local, but in this case particularly international medical graduates, to areas of need,” the Brisbane GP said.
“It’s why we need a whole of workforce strategy: to figure out what flavour of doctors we need in different areas, how we get them there, and how we keep them there, and a rolling cycle of that review.”
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International medical graduates currently make up 53% of the rural medical workforce and 56% of GPs; a statistic that both Dr McMullen and AMA international medical graduate representative Dr Maha Selvanathan agreed showed that the skilled migration program was now essential for basic healthcare access.
Dr Selvanathan spoke to the bureaucratic process of getting authority to work as a doctor in Australia after immigrating on a partner visa.
“The steps involved in getting an overseas GP registered … means making sure that you’ve got the moratorium … that you’ve got PESCI – that’s another interview that you need to take and pass – and then applying for a provider number and applying for the prescriber number, which surprisingly takes very, very long,” Dr Selvanathan said.
“In my case, it took me almost four years from the time I got an offer of a job to actually joining my GP practice. Four years.”
Then there are the issues that arise when doctors live rurally.
For Dr Selvanathan, who is based in the regional town of Armidale, some training sessions were held 450km away.
“Most of the doctors would like to move … and they don’t want to retain [or stay working] in rural areas like MM3 or MM4,” she said.
“They prefer to go from areas MM3, MM4 into the cities because of … their [diaspora] communities, that’s one thing. But also because of training, because of opportunities.”
The inquiry has one more scheduled hearing, on 18 September.
