Paying final year medical students to work as clinical assistants — a model successfully trialled during COVID-19 — could be the key to easing workforce shortage across multiple specialties, including primary care, experts say.

Academics made the call after assessing a ‘pre-internship’ model introduced by Western Health in Melbourne during the pandemic.

Looking to support its “acutely pressured” workforce, the health service recruited final year medical students willing to work up to 20 hours per week as a clinical assistant (CA), supervised by medical and nursing staff.

In addition to COVID-19-specific tasks such as PCR swabs and contact tracing, the students were allowed to do initial patient workups in the ED, including cannulation, ECGs and other investigations.