A good news story from an innovative school program

Engagement in education and retention in schooling are a key component in the wellbeing of young people. Kids who stay in education do better - even aside from academic achievements which can create further opportunities, the social connectedness and supports that exist within a school environment can help to build life skills and emotional resilience. This is why programs that promote engagement in schooling for teens who are at a high risk of dropping out, like the program for young parents at The Canberra College in the ACT, are such a good news story.

As a community, we are becoming more aware of how disadvantage can become entrenched in families across generations. Children growing up in a home where there is no role modelling of the positive aspects of education an employment will be more likely to drop out of education and not find stable employment as adults. If we can encourage teen parents to stay at school, not only are the teens more likely to do better as adults their children will see the benefits in the next generation as well.

The Canberra College has a history of innovation and providing programs that deal with the social determinants of health. Several years ago when I was living in Canberra, I was involved in a "full service schools" project at The Canberra College. This was a project which brought in several services (including primary health services, alcohol & drug services, sexual health services, employment services, pastoral care) into the school as a colocation model. The idea was to bring the services to where young people were in order to overcome the barriers that teens may be faced with in trying to navigate some of these systems in the community. It was fantastic working with a school that was enthusiastic about supporting the wellbeing of their students, and willing to innovate.

I'm not surprised to see that The Canberra College are still "kicking goals" for their students. Good on them!

not enough jobs for junior docs (part 4) ...and yet more Medical Schools...

"CURTIN, Charles Sturt and the University of South Australia will press ahead with their plans to create new medical schools."

In the midst of concerns about intern positions for medical graduates, 3 universities have announced their intent to move forward with plans for more medical schools (and more medical students). Australia is apparently not training enough doctors.

It is undeniable that there is a shortage in the medical workforce, especially in rural areas. However, the bottleneck in training is not at the medical school level. In order to produce doctors that are able to work independently and service areas of medical workforce disadvantage we need to create the supervised junior and training positions to provide vocational training.

Without adequate resourcing of junior medical positions, including indemnity (which is potentially a barrier for moving training into the private sector), and adequate resourcing of the time needed from senior doctors to provide the supervision that junior doctors require, bumping up the number of medical graduates does very little to improve workforce shortages. It makes absolutely no sense to increase the number of medical schools and thereby increase the number of medical students, until the issue of adequate supervised junior positions and vocational training is resolved.

Senior medical folk associated with the universities need to seriously consider wisdom of creating new medical schools at this point in time. If the unit you work in is unable to accommodate any more junior doctor positions (due to funding or availability of adequate supervision) then the rationale for increasing the number of medical graduates is probably difficult to justify.

not enough jobs for junior docs (part 3)

This week, The Australian again reported on the lack of intern places for medical graduates. It is encouraging to see that the various interested parties (students, deans of medical schools, professional organisations) are starting to reach some level of agreement about what needs to happen. Now if only the people who make the decisions will listen...

Creating intern positions involves more than just putting aside money to pay their salaries. Medical interns are just out of university - they have a fair amount of book learning but don't actually have the context with which to use this knowledge safely. They need a hell of a lot of supervision. In order to have interns working safely, there needs to be training and infrastructure to support the senior doctors providing supervision, money to pay for supervisors' time, and adequate senior staffing levels so that supervisors can provide adequate oversight. I haven't heard any murmurings of this happening any time soon.