Internship places for international medical graduates

A recent study into the issue came to the following conclusions:

1: The 'areas of need' program for foreign doctors is poorly targeted and thus ineffective;

2. The current number of foreign doctors gaining PR visas is over 1000;

3. There will be an oversupply of doctors in the future if current trends continue - a given when numbers have gone from around 2000/year (or less) to 3500/year in just a decade, caused by increases in both Australian graduate numbers and foreign doctors on PR visas. So yes, I do believe that, in part, the lax regulations on PR visa supply to foreign trained doctors is a bad thing when it: means postgraduate training positions for Australians are given to internationally trained foreign doctors; these doctors go to 'areas of need' that really aren't 'areas of need'; there is an impending excess, in general, of doctors going into the future; employers sometimes favour 457 visas for foreign trained doctors as they will work for worse conditions and pay. All of these arguments are supported by the findings of this one study.

I'd also like to highlight that, if the reports findings are accurate - and I'm sure they are - 1000 immigrants from 2010-2011 came as medical doctors intending to practise, with more coming as partners to other primary immigrants. During this year, there were 108 100 immigrants in total. Thus, the ratio was nearly 1:100 much, much, much greater than the general patient to doctor ratio required. Thus, the proportion of doctors immigrating to Australia is much higher than necessary and I would argue caps need to be applied to match doctor: other immigrant ratio as per the normal doctor: patient ratio.

The study is here, conducted by Monash University: http://arts.monash.edu.au/cpur/--dow...lth-crisis.pdf

I'd disagree with the above post. Australia, despite having too many medical students (and soon/now JMOs), has a shortage of fully-qualified doctors. Letting more qualified docs in from overseas will 1) help to reduce that shortage, and 2) mean that there are actually enough senior docs running round to train the squillions of new grads Aussie is pumping out.