Uni wants to fast-track doctors

Curtin University is moving a step closer to opening a new medical school which it says will help plug the doctor shortage by training them in five years instead of seven.

Although the Federal Government to yet to approve the move, the university says more medical places are needed, with emphasis on training doctors to deal with primary care, mental health and chronic diseases.

The proposed direct-entry five-year degree from 2014 could give Curtin the edge over the medical schools at the University of WA and at Notre Dame, where students do a three-year bachelor degree before the four-year medical degree.

Pro Vice-Chancellor Jill Downie from Curtin's faculty of health sciences said the university had started recruiting for the head of its proposed medical school.

It hoped to have the go-ahead by the middle of this year so it could start an 18-month accreditation process with the Australian Medical Council.

It wants 100 Commonwealth- supported students in the first year and plans to add 100 a year to have 500 students by 2018.

Under the plan, the first batch of graduates would be ready to start internships and postgraduate training in 2019. The Australian Medical Association has warned there could be a glut of new doctors unable to get internships or adequate supervision.

But Professor Downie said she was confident that enough clinical places had been mapped out.

"Even though medical student numbers have increased since 2006, we think there is still a need for more, given there is a doctor shortage with 92 vacancies in regional areas," she said.

"We're still very dependent on overseas-trained doctors and are not growing enough of our own, especially when we have all these new hospital beds opening in the next few years."

Curtin will launch a campaign to garner public support.

But AMA WA president Dave Mountain said it was premature to talk about a third medical school when previous increases in medical places were yet to bear fruit.

"We've had a 250 per cent increase in students in the past three to four years and there is already an absolute bottleneck in trying to find academics to train the students and supervisors for the interns," he said.