University of Wollongong medical students have welcomed the NSW Government's plan to permanently pay final year student doctors to work in the state's overburdened hospitals.
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Premier Dominic Perrottet announced this week that a program introduced as a COVID-19 measure to ease staffing shortages will continue, with more than 1000 part-time paid positions open to final year student doctors.
UOW is one of nine universities to be a part of the program, and Wollongong University Medical Students Society (WUMSS) President Dugald O'Neill said there was strong interest among his cohort in taking part in the program, called Assistants in Medicine.
He said roughly 50 students in the final cohort this year had elected to take part in the temporary program, which has been in place over the past three years.
"It was started because of shortages and what COVID did to our health system, but it was such a fantastic implementation not just for helping the hospitals but also for students ourselves," Mr O'Neill said.
"You're essentially getting six months of preparations for a role you're going to go into the year after."
He said the paid positions allowed the final year student doctors to play a bigger role in their assigned medical team, and were also an added incentive to put in the hours at the hospital.
"The program allow fourth year students to prepare so much more for what the coming years hold, while also getting paid which is a big benefit for students who have spent three and a half years not getting paid," he said.
He said the pay incentive was helpful to sustain and encourage young doctors in their final year of study, especially in rural and regional areas where workforce shortages have been a problem.
"This helps to ensure people don't go and work elsewhere, or even leave the profession," he said.
"It's also a big help to medical teams who are pretty run off their feet. The difference between being in the AIM program and just being a fourth year medical student is that you actually part of the team.
"You can order certain things, you can do consults - you still can't order medications and things, but you can make a big dent in their work load."
He said patients also benefitted, by gaining more access to members of their medical team.
"You've got doctors who are less stressed or under the pump all the time, so they have more time to be invested in each patient," he said.
"Having another member or the team that is a fourth year student means you could get more interaction with the doctors, because they are directly involved with patient care with junior doctors in the hospitals."
Since the AiM role was introduced, the government says over 1,100 NSW medical students have worked as Assistants in Medicine in rural, regional and metropolitan hospitals.
Minister for Regional Health Bronnie Taylor said an evaluation of the program revealed significant benefits to the medical workforce, local health districts and the universities.
"We've seen [students] working across a wide range of specialties including general medicine, emergency, surgery, intensive care and psychiatry while allowing junior doctors to work to the top of their scope of practice," she said.
"We are so excited about the prospect of giving more students the opportunity to kick start their medical careers, particularly in our regional hospitals, while also growing our relationship with NSW's highly regarded medical schools."
The evaluation of the program found there were no specialties in which Assistants in Medicine were not able to be utilised successfully.
It also found that supervisors saw rapid skill progression among AiMs, and junior doctors were enabled to focus on clinical tasks and patient care, respond to critical calls and attend theatre more frequently, whilst allowing them to gain experience in a teaching/supervisory role.
Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
