{"id":4833,"date":"2012-02-17T02:50:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T18:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/addressing-western-australias-growing-doctor-shortage\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:06:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:06:50","slug":"addressing-western-australias-growing-doctor-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/addressing-western-australias-growing-doctor-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing Western Australia\u2019s growing doctor shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curtin University has launched doctorsforthefuture<\/a>, a community campaign aimed at raising awareness of the increasing shortage of doctors in Western Australia and Curtin\u2019s proposal for a medical school at its Bentley Campus.<\/p>\n

The proposed medical school would increase the number of doctors available by offering the only five-year direct-entry undergraduate medicine degree available in Western Australia.<\/p>\n

Curtin\u2019s Vice-Chancellor Professor Jeanette Hacket said it is clear that the people of rural and regional WA need more doctors now, and in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurtin\u2019s proposed medical school would mean that prospective medical students could commence their path to a career as a doctor from day one, rather than needing to complete an undergraduate degree before starting their medical studies,\u201d Professor Hacket said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis would result in more Western Australian-educated doctors in the workforce sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would also mean prospective students looking for a direct-entry route into medical studies would have a local option and may be less likely to move away from Western Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studies have shown that Western Australia is currently facing a shortfall of 100 rural doctors, and based on projections, by 2022 we could need almost 3,000 more doctors across both metropolitan and rural areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know from research that students who are educated and trained in rural areas are more likely to remain in or return to work in these regional locations,\u201d Professor Hacket said.<\/p>\n

To address doctor shortages in rural and regional WA, Curtin is proposing to establish a number of clinical schools in priority locations across the State.<\/p>\n

In collaboration with industry, Curtin\u2019s health sciences students are currently participating in team-based clinical training in Geraldton and Albany. Should the University receive approval to establish a medical school, Curtin\u2019s medical students would join a similar program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe plan to produce doctors who will stay and practice medicine in priority locations, helping to ease doctor shortages in these regions,\u201d Professor Hacket said.<\/p>\n

The collaborative format of Curtin\u2019s proposed medical degree would ensure the students would have a headstart on teamwork as they engaged with Australia\u2019s first fully integrated interprofessional education curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurtin is leading the way in providing a team-based approach to teaching health professionals which will lead to improved patient safety and quality of care,\u201d Professor Hacket said.<\/p>\n

The proposed medical school\u2019s curriculum is aligned with the key areas of need in the WA community and will have a primary care focus with an emphasis on chronic disease, aged care, mental health, Indigenous health, biomedical and clinical sciences, and population health.
\nCurtin\u2019s Pro Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Health Sciences Professor Jill Downie said clinical placements are also being negotiated with major healthcare providers in WA.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have plans for alternative clinical placements for the training of our medical students in the aged care arena where there are more than 15,000 residential healthcare beds,\u201d Professor Downie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould the medical school be approved, Curtin will immediately begin the process of accreditation with the Australian Medical Council (AMC).\u201d<\/p>\n

If approval is gained by mid-2012, the first graduates of Curtin\u2019s AMC-accredited degree would enter the workforce in 2019.<\/p>\n

To register support for the campaign visit doctorsforthefuture.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

\"WA's<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Curtin’s proposed medical school aims to alleviate a doctor shortage in Western Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"5496,4930,5415,4945,7381,4576","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-4833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/doctorsforthefuture2.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Jarrad","last_name":"Long","display_name":"Jarrad Long"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-20 05:24:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}