Home grown course will be better by degrees

The welcome news that aspiring doctors and medical professionals won’t have to leave Cairns to complete their medical degrees is a huge win for the Far North. James Cook University’s Dean of Medicine and Dentistry, Professor Richard Murray, was rightly beaming today when announcing they would welcome 40 first-year medical students to the Smithfield campus from February 2023. The university currently offers the first years of its medicine courses in Townsville and graduates around 150 medical students each year.

That is set to change.

The campus will begin teaching years one to three at the school next year, with 20 Commonwealth-supported student places already secured and hopes of staking a share in the 80 additional placements available nationally.

This should have a positive knock-on effect. As Professor Murray aptly put it “more students means more of a chance of filling GP vacancies”, bringing a reprieve to the Far North’s crippling GP shortage.

Before Covid, Australia was recruiting around 3000 overseas trained doctors to fill the gaps in the regions, a number Prof Murray has long said is unacceptable when the gap could be trained and developed right here in Cairns.

“We are extending to Cairns an established, high-quality medical degree, and we’re following our tried and tested formula for producing doctors who want to work where they’re needed most,” he said.

“We select candidates who come from our regions, we educate them here, and during their clinical training they work with and for our communities.”

They know it works.