Uni ‘ready’ to increase med intake
THE Government’s continued refusal to fund an increase in medical student numbers — the easiest step to fix the workforce shortage — is disappointing, the University of Otago says.
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) and the National Party have also criticised the lack of dedicated funding for this in Budget 2023, released last week.
Minister of Health Dr
Ayesha Verrall said the workforce was one of her top priorities, and health and education agencies were working on a range of ways to address challenges.
Medical school acting dean Prof Tim Wilkinson said the university remained ‘‘ready and willing’’ to increase domestic medical intake from 282 to 300 students next year, and potentially many more in future.
‘‘We are disappointed the Government was unable to provide extra funding to increase the number of medical students we train, something we have been advocating for several years.’’
The country’s two medical schools, run by the Universities of Otago and Auckland, were not allowed to train more doctors, with the cap set by government, he said.
Last year, Otago University told thenminister of health Andrew Little, senior health officials, and the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) it was willing to take on a further 18 students as early as 2023.
While an increase would require coordination to ensure adequate access to clinical training, the university did not expect this would be a problem.
The increase did not occur and the reasoning behind this was not forthcoming.
Dr Verrall said at the time the decisions were made before she became health minister, but New Zealand needed more medical professionals and she would discuss this with involved parties.
Prof Wilkinson said the cap on medical student places was last increased in 2015 as part of a multiyear investment to increase the intakes at both Otago and Auckland.
‘‘The final tranche of the planned increase was never implemented.
‘‘In the first instance, we would like to increase the cap by 18 students to 300 students annually.’’
Looking forward, the university could potentially increase medical and other health programme intakes ‘‘substantially further’’.
It was aware of the national shortage of GPs and many other health practitioners and was well placed to help improve the education and training of the country’s health workforce, he said.
The university was looking forward to working with Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand and Te Aka Whai Ora Ma¯ori Health Authority to do this.
The easiest step to fix the shortage was to lift the limit on how many doctors the medical schools were allowed to train.
‘‘It takes a village, or villages, to make a doctor but relaxing the cap on medical student places would be a good start.’’
ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton said given the enormous lead in time for training senior doctors and dentists, numbers needed to be increased immediately.
This needed to be fed into pipeline planning, a challenge ASMS was working with other medical unions and Te Whatu Ora to achieve.
‘‘If Te Whatu Ora, and our Government, is not committed to growing our locally trained workforce, they need to be honest about that.
‘‘It’s not enough to talk about training more doctors, we need to get stuck in and do it.’’
National Party MP and health spokesman Dr Shane Reti said Labour had no longterm plan for the health workforce, and had maintained the cap instead of listening to calls from the sector to increase the number of medical graduates.
‘‘There is a critical health workforce shortage and with reports that half of New Zealand’s family doctors will be retired in a few years, it has never been more important to turn on our domestic pipeline to grow our own culturally competent doctors,’’ he said.
Asked if National would increase the cap if it led the next Government, he said the party would have more to say on health policies closer to the election.
Dr Verrall did not say why funding had not been earmarked for a cap increase, or whether it was still possible this would occur in 2024.
The health workforce was one of her top priorities upon taking on the role.