So it begins.NSW has run out of internships.
And so, in accordance with the letter sent to USyd students a while ago (and shown below), overseas students are being told so long and thanks for all the fees. Although, contrary to the comment from Andrew Pesce from the AMA, med students pay for an MBBS, not for an internship.
BTW applicants from overseas now have buckleys. UK grads be warned.
So, 879 students applied for 670 positions. There were 566 places in 2005 which is an ~18% (~20 pa) increase in five years. According to my rough calcs, to honour the COAG guarantee for Commonwealth funded students, we need to get to ~750 which is another 80 places... 14 more per year until 2015.
Next to lose out will be the full fee and interstate students.
So, perhaps by throwing the full fee payers and the internationals to the wolves, NSW may manage to fulfill their promise.
Another point against the recent overseas grads is that many PGY2/3 positions may be restructured as intern positions. I am not sure of the numbers, but in my experience there is a greater intake of overseas trained doctors (apart from ones who have done a fair amount of their registrar stuff or are in fact consultants back home) as residents than interns. A number of hospitals have interns doing placements that used to be PGY2/3 during relief terms etc if they are under pressure anyway.
ReplyDeleteInteresting information from the frontline, Dragonfly: thanks.
ReplyDeleteIf I've understood this correctly, it sounds a bit like a "borrow from Peter to pay Paul" approach which may just move the bottleneck further along a bit.