The National Medical Intern Summit was held in Sydney on Friday 22^nd February. It brought together the Federal Government, State and Territory Health Ministers, Deans of Medicine, the Australian Medical Association, Catholic Hospitals Australia, the Medical Board of Australia and the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA). According to a media release from AMSA, they were urging a “united focus” to ensure that there will be high quality internships for the more than 3,500 medical students who are due to graduate from Australia’s 20 medical schools in 2013.

So what came out of the summit?

1.      Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was quoted as saying “We’re going to have a huge need for doctors in the future, and doubling the number of medical students that we’re training will go some of the way in meeting that future demand,” and that “What we’ve got to make sure we do is place those interns so they get a little bit of experience before they’re off on their own.”

2.      National Intern Allocation System – this was one of the key ideas at the summit, with suggestions that a national allocation system would reduce confusion around intern places, as currently state governments have different rules on who gets preferences for places.

3.      Discussion paper – The New South Wales government is expected to draw up a discussion paper of options on how the medical training system can be reformed. The paper will then go before the Council of Australian Governments.

You can check out more articles about what happened at the National Medical Intern Summit here – Croakey.

In related news, Health Workforce Australia has set up the National Medical Training Advisory Network, and is taking feedback about its discussion paper until 30^th April 2013.