As the federal government prepares to wipe up to $70,000 of study debt for doctors in exchange for them working in rural and remote areas for three years, a local health executive says the solution to Australia's rural health workforce crisis is not more money but to create a better work environment.
With communities across regional Australia short staffed for GP's or with no doctor at all, Riverland Mallee Local Health Network (RMLHN) executive director of clinical innovation Professor Paul Worley it needed to offer a world class health system.
"You can't attract people to a second-class system without having to have some sort of bribe or bond," he said.
"We've taken the view that we're not going to pay people more than they can earn elsewhere.
"We're not going to put [out] bribes or bonds or anything.
"We're just going to develop a health system that is good as any health system in the world."
'We can be extraordinary'
Professor Worley said communities needed to make a commitment to be "extraordinary" because operating in crisis mode had become situation normal.
"We need executives and boards and communities with that same vision and same commitment to say, 'We don't have to settle for being ordinary or being normal' because normal actually involved being in a crisis.
"We can be extraordinary."
Pathways for rural generalists
RMLHN's Riverland Academy of Clinical Excellence (RACE) program provides pathways for junior doctors to become rural generalists.
It has recruited 30 trainee medical officers to the region and increased the region's medical workforce by 21 per cent in one year.
Professor Worley believed his region was a leader in rural health.
"Our region is looking to establish itself as a centre of excellence in rural health," he said.
"That's why we've developed the Riverland Academy of Clinical Excellence."
A Rural Health Workforce Research and Development Symposium will take place in Berri this Saturday to celebrate the work of the RACE program and 25 years of rural medical training in the region.
Flinders University Dean of Rural and Remote Health SA & NT Professor Robyn Aitken said training doctors in regional Australia continued to be important.
"There is growing evidence to suggest that health and medical students who undertake extended training in a rural area, and those from a rural background, are more likely to join the rural workforce upon graduation," she said.
