Ararat to host Deakin ‘doctors’

Deakin University medical students can soon complete the first year of their medical degree in Ararat.

From next year, students entering Deakin’s Doctor of Medicine, MD, as part of the ‘rural training stream’ can complete the first year of their course at one of two rural training hubs – East Grampians Health Service in Ararat or the university’s campus in Warrnambool.

From 2025, year-two of the MD will be offered at these sites.

East Grampians Health Service chief executive Nick Bush said the health service hoped to appoint 15 applicants to the study positions.

“We are very excited and appreciative of the efforts being made by Deakin University to help local nurses and allied health practitioners study to be rural doctors in their local communities. The initiative is a significant change to what medical training has historically been,” he said.

“It is an innovative approach to have the first two years of the Deakin medicine course delivered at Ararat and Warrnambool. This makes the course accessible for rural health professionals.

“Deakin University is also exempting these students from the Graduate Medical School Admissions Test, GAMSAT, which can be prohibitive for rural health professionals in getting into medicine.

“We look forward to filling the 15 positions in 2024 with local nurses and allied health professionals or local residents who have undergraduate degrees.”

Professor Gary Rogers, Deakin Unviersity’s Dean of the School of Medicine, said the changes would give aspiring doctors greater choice in where they lived and studied.

“It’s really important that students from our region remain living in and connected to their communities while completing their medical studies,” he said.

“Being forced to move away to attend university is not only a financial burden; it is also disruptive for them and their families and makes it less likely they will return as a future doctor.”

Deakin’s rural training stream admitted its second intake of medical students this year and allocates at least 30 places a year for students from rural backgrounds, with priority given to applicants from communities in Deakin’s ‘rural footprint’, including south-west Victoria and the Grampians and Wimmera region.

Until now, Deakin medical students had to complete their year-one and two studies at the university’s Waurn Ponds campus in Geelong.

Deakin’s director of rural medical education, Associate Professor Lara Fuller, said the university hoped the changes would open a door for a new generation of rural students to consider becoming rural doctors.

“It is important that potential applicants, such as existing rural health professionals, don’t have to sit expensive admissions exams and undertake further study just to apply for the MD,” she said.

“We aim to deliver most of the teaching at the rural sites, with occasional requirements to attend the Waurn Ponds campus.

“We have already commenced recruitment of professional staff and will also be employing academic staff in each region to deliver the program.”

People wanting more information can go to gemsas.edu.au

Applications open in May.