WIMMERA Health Care Group wants to expand its emergency medicine training capabilities.
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The plan is part of an ongoing bid to keep medical interns in the region longer and address an ongoing doctor shortage.
The Department of Health and Human Services this week said 290 first-year medical interns would be based at rural and regional hospitals in 2019.
A department spokesman said hospitals were selected to host medical interns based on their ability to have appropriate staffing to train and supervise junior doctors.
While none have been specifically allocated to Wimmera hospitals, Wimmera Health Care Group director of medical services Professor Alan Wolff said the organisation would still get its share of junior doctors.
“We receive 13 interns at a time from Royal Melbourne Hospital and they come for 10-week rotations, five times a year,” Professor Wolff said.
“The main incentive (to come to Horsham) is really the conditions under which they work... the facilities the hospital offers, the hours, the support for junior staff, the opportunity to do some research.”
Professor Wolff said the health care group is accredited to train interns in two of the three core first-year subjects – medicine and surgery – and was working towards accreditation for the third, being emergency medicine.
“We’ve appointed a director of emergency services here and we’ll be looking at making that a core rotation,” he said. “We also offer unique short rotations in obstetrics and anaesthetics which are unusual to be offered in the intern year.
“We’ve had a number of interns come just to be able to do those rotations to see whether they are specialties they would like to pursue.”
Professor Wolff said four medical students from Deakin University would spend this year in Horsham as part of the third year of their studies.
“We are hoping, with 12 months of exposure to rural practice, there will be a greater proportion of those students (who) come back as interns and registrars and hopefully one day as GPs,” he said.
Professor Wolff said a small number of doctors who spent time in Horsham as part of their studies and training had returned to work in the Wimmera – but not enough to supply the demand.
He said medicine was a postgraduate qualification, meaning many doctors had established themselves in the locations where they were studying by the time they finished and were therefore not inclined to move to work in other areas like the Wimmera.