March 2004

Study shows doctors who train in the country are more likely to come back

A study published in the Medical Journal of Australia has found doctors who completed their internships at Ballarat Health Services’ Base Hospital were more likely to return to the country than their metropolitan-trained colleagues.

The authors of the study were Visiting Consultant at Ballarat Health Services (BHS) and Professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne Professor Hedley Peach and Maxine Trembath and Dr Bernie Fensling from the Medical Administration Department at BHS.

Their study showed almost 50 per cent of the Ballarat Base Hospital interns become general practitioners outside metropolitan areas compared with only 13 per cent of interns in Melbourne and Geelong.

Professor Peach said for many years, Ballarat Base Hospital had been the chief provider of year-long internships outside the metropolitan areas of Victoria, increasing the number of doctors practising in regional Australia.

‘Currently, only nine per cent of all internships across Australia give new medical graduates the opportunity of spending the whole year outside the capital cities.

‘Most internships are in metropolitan hospitals and only allow doctors to rotate to a regional hospital for a couple of months.’

Between 1989–1997, Ballarat Base Hospital employed 63 interns after a statewide matching of medical graduate and hospital preferences.

‘We were able to find out where 57 of the interns were practising in 2002,’ Professor Peach said.

One hundred and twenty six interns were chosen at random from those employed at hospitals in Melbourne or Geelong over the same period and were also followed up.

‘The 12 months the interns spent at Ballarat Base Hospital may have helped those graduates already thinking about a rural career to confirm that decision and may have awakened an interest in rural medicine among some of the other interns.’

The researchers also found that 41 per cent of the BHS interns who were practising as GPs were doing so in Ballarat or elsewhere in the Grampians Region, showing BHS interns were an important source of local doctors.

The proportion of interns, whether at BHS or the metropolitan hospitals, who became country specialists was small.

‘More advanced training posts in non-metropolitan areas such as those being established under the State/Commonwealth initiative (Advanced Specialist Training Posts in Rural Australia programme)—launched by Minister for Health Bronwyn Pike in May 2003 in Ballarat, may encourage regional interns to become specialists in non-metropolitan areas,’ Professor Peach said.

Ballarat Health Services has just taken in 12 interns for 2004, its largest group ever.