Why did John Howard’s mass expansion of med student numbers fail to fix the Aussie workforce crisis?
Professor Anthony Scott says producing more medical graduates should not be a goal for Australia's policymakers.
Twenty years ago, Australia embarked on a mass expansion of medical school places. It was meant to fix the country’s over-reliance on IMGs to fill workforce holes and create a new era of self-sufficiency.
It has not worked: training bottlenecks seem to be one result, and the workforce holes remain.
Professor Anthony Scott is probably one of the best-known experts on the issue.
Here, the director of the Centre for Health Economics at Monash Business School explains why self-sufficiency should no longer be the goal.
