Maintaining an Effective Procedural Workforce in Rural Western Australia
The findings in this report reflect serious concerns about both the current gap and a projected decline over the next 15 years in Western Australia's rural procedural medical workforce.
Current workforce gaps are identified as 14.5 full time General Practice (GP) proceduralists and 12 procedural specialists. There is already a growing crisis in procedural coverage in a number of locations across the state, most notably in the north-west.
Current trends indicate that, unless measures to address the supply of Australian trained procedural doctors are implemented, the decline in the availability of procedural doctors in rural WA will accelerate with the ageing of the workforce and require increased recruitment from overseas into the future.
The projected replacement rate of rural procedural doctors stands at more than 30 per annum. This number is required simply to replace those expected to leave the workforce each year. The rate of replacement of rural procedural GPs by doctors sourced from overseas is already very high at more than 70% in 2005 and 60% in 2006 and exceeds the percentage of OTDs in the overall rural GP workforce (46%) and is higher than annual arrivals into the overall workforce (44%).
Ways Forward
A concerted effort is required to arrest the procedural workforce decline and put a brake on the extent of overseas recruitment. The future procedural workforce should be drawn primarily from the following sources:
1 Medical Graduates
The opportunity exists to begin to encourage more medical undergraduates to consider procedural practice given the increased numbers of medical graduates from 2009.
2 Procedural Doctors
A further source is to examine those procedural doctors who have ceased procedural practice and encourage them to re-skill and return to the procedural workforce.
3 Current OTDs
Anecdotal evidence from OTDs currently practising in WA suggests they possess procedural skills, but are unable to exercise them through lack of assessment and/or access to hospitals capable of using their skills.
4 Interstate Recruitment
Maintenance of recruitment efforts interstate.
5 Overseas Recruitment
Maintenance of recruitment efforts overseas.
