A new program in South Australia's Riverland will offer medical graduates the opportunity to complete their training as doctors in the region, described as trial for the rest of Australia.
The program will launch next year and aims to create its own local medical workforce to address a chronic shortage of health care professionals.
It is being spearheaded by the executive director of the Riverland, Mallee and Coorong Local Health Network and Flinders University Emeritus Professor Paul Worley.
He said providing training in country towns would overcome the main issue with recruiting in regional areas — getting people to leave the city.
"They have good social, family, and medical networks, and we find it difficult extracting them from that environment to come to the bush," Professor Worley said.
Rural medical pathway for students
Currently, medical students can complete a year of regional training as part of their degree in Renmark through Flinders University's Parallel Rural Community Curriculum.
Following that they must return to the city or a regional centre to complete their postgraduate training.
The new program, which will roll out in 2022, will aim to recruit 10 junior doctors, early graduates, and registrars to train in the Riverland.
"We want to give local medical graduates the opportunity to go straight into internships, carry on through their junior doctor and registar training, so they can see a career plan based in the Riverland," Professor Worley said.
Once they complete up to six years of training in the Riverland they would be fully qualified doctors.
"We're hoping after spending so long here, this is where they will see their career and life," Professor Worley said.
"It's worked in the city … it will work for our region.
'Keen for junior doctors to come back'
Third-year Flinders University medical student Megan McKeough is part of the PRCC program and is working at Waikerie Hospital.
She said the new recruiting program for doctors in the Riverland was a "great opportunity".
"Having the opportunity to come back to an area I've been in during medical school will be great," Ms McKeough said.
She said working in a country town she was aware of "the impact the doctors really have on the community".
"Being able to feel part of a community while you're also working somewhere is just great."
Local training model for health
Similar programs have been rolled out in large regional cities across Australia before such as Bendigo, Ballarat, and Townsville.
But it had never been done in small rural towns before like the Riverland, and Professor Worley said the trial will be "a flagship program for the rest of Australia".
"If we develop this in medicine I'm confident that midwifery and the allied health professions would also be able to get a far longer commitment to local training," Mr Worley said.
"We will see a new generation of doctors working and living here in the Riverland, and we will see a health service that sees training, research, and clinical care all reinforcing each other and being all of our responsibility."
