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AMSA Intern Campaign

What is the AMSA Intern Campaign? | How Does the Campaign Work? |
What Has My State Said So Far? | How do I Get Involved? Further Information

What is the AMSA Intern Campaign?

It is no secret that the number of medical students in Australia has increased dramatically in the last couple of years. Training these students in universities has been a challenge, but universities, hospitals and the government continue to work with us to ensure that students still receive a high quality level of training in medical school.

However, upon graduation, these students need intern jobs. Intern jobs do not come out of nowhere - they must be adequately funded and supervised to provide continuing quality of medical education to maintain Australia's highly competent and successful health workforce. We are concerned that in the future, because of increased student numbers, medical students will not be able to get an intern job upon graduation.

The following video illustrates a fictional but shocking scenario that could be the way of the future, if we do not continue to advocate on your behalf.

How Does the Campaign Work?

The AMSA Intern Campaign aims to extract guarantees from all the states and territories regarding the provision of internships. To this end, we sent each State Health Minister a letter, asking how they are planning to expand intern training capacity. Some states are doing better than others with Western Australia and Victoria showing concrete planning on how to address the increasing numbers.

The responses from Tasmania and New South Wales, while acknowledging capacity problems are yet to go far enough to satisfy our concerns about their ability to deal with increasing student numbers.

What Has My State Said So Far?

Please find below the letters relevant to your state:

Letter to State Health Minister	Response Received
ACT	Yes
New South Wales	Yes
Queensland	No response to date
South Australia	No response to date
Tasmania	Yes
Victoria	Yes
Western Australia	Yes

AMSA's position is that it is inconsistent with the community's expectations for health care to train medical students who may not get jobs - your training is not just important to you, but to every patient you treat. AMSA has had significant media support on this issue but now we need your help to raise politicians' awareness.

How Do I Get Involved?

The letters below have been individualised for each university in Queensland, SA, NSW and Tasmania from whom we have not yet received a response, or the response still leaves some questions unanswered. Click to download the template, fill in the gaps, pop it in an envelope, attach a stamp (55c nowdays) and be assured that you've made a big difference to ensuring a quality health workforce in the years to come. The Health Departments in Victoria, Western Australia, ACT have provided us with satisfactory responses. AMSA will continue to correspond with these state departments on your behalf, to ensure they have a strategic plan to guarantee the quality of these intern places. We will keep you updated.

Bond University	Griffith University	JCU
University of Queensland	University of Adelaide	Flinders University
University of Tasmania	University of Sydney	University of Notre Dame Syd
University of Newcastle	University of New England	University of Western Sydney
University of New South Wales	University of Wollongong