Rural GP Network chief executive Dalton Kelly says there are 50 vacancies for general practitioners in rural areas and similar shortages in allied health services but he warns pending retirements from an aging workforce will exacerbate the shortage.
“It’s a serious issue and it is only going to get worst because many GPs working in rural areas are going to retire.”
The network has a Government contract to recruit foreign doctors to fill that void and Kelly says they place about 90 a year in what he terms a stop-gap measure.
The long-term solution is to train and employ rural people in rural communities.
The network wants the Government to establish a rural health commissioner to provide an independent overview of issues, services and structures affecting rural health services and one potential project could be implementing rural training hubs.
Both projects have been implemented in Australia and have proved effective, Kelly says.
Training hubs are premised on the notion school leavers in rural areas who remain in their community while training in the health sector will stay there.
“A rural person who is rural educated is more likely to go back and work in their rural community.”
Kelly says hubs would be established in designated rural training hospitals around the country where students will be educated by doctors and practice nurses.
The proposal will expose students to a wider variety of tasks than at present, such as a patient consultation with a GP, paediatrician, physiotherapist or dentist while also working alongside a chemist or making house calls with a nurse.
Australia overcame the logistical challenges of distance so he is confident a similar scheme could operate in NZ.
“It has been shown in Australia that if you have a good experience of a rural health education in a rural setting and with the support of the rural community it helps encourage young people to go back and work there when they qualify.”
Students would be required to make frequent visits to a tertiary medical school but with modern communication and the co-operation of rural health professionals training hubs could work here.
The idea has the support of Health Minister David Clark who earlier this year told a Rural GP conference he favours rural workforce training hubs and is seeking details of how they can be implemented.
Dalton confirmed consultants are scoping the project and will report back this month and he hopes the report will include a structure, location of hubs and funding requirement that can be included in next year’s Budget round.
A National Party-led government will explore a third medical school focused on supplying GPs to rural communities.
The proposal is contained in an education discussion document that replicates the party’s school of rural medicine proposal when last in charge of the Treasury benches but which was canned by this Government.
It would be run by Auckland and Otago Universities in association with Auckland University of Technology, the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners and the NZ Rural General Practice Network and train 60 doctors a year for rural practice.
Earlier Waikato University proposed a rural-focused graduate entry medical school to train rural doctors, which was also rejected by the Government.
The school of rural medicine has similarities to the rural training hubs now being promoted, being an inter-professional faculty with student training in rural hospitals.
