Call for medical intern role in aged care

Source:  Australian Ageing Agenda  8 January 2012

Aged care facilities may soon be training medical interns under a proposal from Catholic Health Australia to help meet the looming shortfall of hospital intern placements for graduating medical students.

Catholic Health Australia, which operates ten per cent of Australia’s hospital beds across its 75 hospitals, 21 of which are public hospitals, has offered to provide the estimated extra 350 to 400 intern training places required by the end of this year, provided state governments will consider expanding training places in the future to include aged care.

Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Health Australia (CHA), Martin Laverty,said many Catholic hospitals and aged care services have played a range of differing roles in nursing and medical training for decades, and could play a greater role in the training of medical graduates in the future.

“We’ve said we can step in and fill the breach for next year.  We already take interns in our public hospitals so we have the capacity. And many of our public teaching hospitals are co-located with private hospitals,” said Mr Laverty. more