Two in five Australian medical students say they have to work on top of receiving Centrelink in order to get by – but their placements are still unpaid.
Medical students are increasingly taking on part- or full-time work on top of their course load to make ends meet, as calls for another expansion of the commonwealth’s paid placement scheme go unanswered.
The peak body representing medical schools, Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand, has tracked the income sources of medical students through the Medical Schools Outcomes Database since 2014.
An analysis published by MDANZ on Tuesday revealed that, in 2014, roughly 50% of medical students worked and around 60% were on Centrelink.
As of 2025, around 60% of students were working and roughly 55% were on Centrelink.
“Medical students are not taking on more paid work because they have spare time,” MDANZ vice president Professor Ruth Kearon said.
“They are doing it to cover rent, food and placement costs during their training to become doctors.”
“Full-time clinical placements leave little room for paid work, and many students are now trying to do both at once.
“That is not a sustainable model, and it is not one that serves patients, students or the future health workforce.”
While there was a fairly large chunk – about 25% – of medical students who said they relied on neither Centrelink nor employment for income, 42% said they relied on both Centrelink and employment.
“Evidence from our own student population tells us that rural, regional and first-in-family students are exactly the students we most need in the future medical workforce, are disproportionately affected by placement poverty,” Professor Kearon said.
“If we are serious about a sustainable, well-distributed medical workforce, we cannot keep asking these students to shoulder the financial stress of their own training.”
On average, medical students do 3000 hours of mandatory, unpaid clinical placements across their degree – the highest amount of any health degree.
The Commonwealth Prac Payment scheme, introduced in 2024, is a means-tested support program which allows payments of up to $338.60 per week for students currently undertaking placement as part of a teaching, nursing, midwifery or social work degree.
Related
Recently, it was extended to include those studying physiotherapy, occupational therapy, clinical psychology, pharmacy, podiatry, speech pathology, audiology, radiography, rehab therapy, and paramedicine.
The program was not up for independent review until 2028 – a fact that the MDANZ labelled “not acceptable”.
“… It leaves an increasingly hard-to-justify equity gap for medical students,” Professor Kearon said.
“They face the longest and most demanding placement hours of any health discipline, and they are now the only major cohort of placement-heavy students without access to this support.”
MDANZ was not the only group up in arms.
ASMOF NSW, the union representing salaried medical officers, also put in its two cents.
“On any hospital ward, medical students are training alongside nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy students who are eligible for paid prac,” ASMOF NSW president Dr Nicholas Spooner said.
“Yet the students completing the greatest number of mandatory unpaid placement hours are the only ones receiving absolutely nothing. It simply doesn’t make sense.”
Placement poverty, he said, restricted “who can afford to finish medicine”.
Even extending the payment scheme to cover final-year students only would make a difference, Dr Spooner argued.
“Extending the prac payment to eligible final-year medical students nationally would only cost approximately $15 million to $24 million a year, and it would boost the number of young doctors entering the public health system at a time of critical shortages,” he said.
“We call on the Federal Government to immediately extend the Commonwealth Prac Payment to all eligible medical students on the same payment rate, eligibility criteria and means-testing arrangements that apply to other healthcare students.”
