The Nepean Local Health District will benefit from a major boost to its local medical workforce – with 70 of medical graduate interns starting work in local public hospitals this month – the Minister for Health Ryan Park announced on Thursday.

Interns are medical graduates who have completed their medical degree and are required to complete a supervised year of practice in order to become independent practitioners.

The interns will work with and learn from NSW Health’s experienced and highly skilled medical staff in one of the world’s best health systems.

The new doctors starting their internship will be entering a training program with networked hospitals throughout the state, providing formal and on-the-job training.

They receive two-year contracts to rotate between metropolitan, regional, and rural hospitals to ensure the diversity of their experience.

They also rotate across different specialties during the intern year, including surgery, medicine, and emergency medicine.

The NSW Government is undertaking an ambitious plan to rebuild the state’s health workforce, including through:

• Implementing safe staffing levels of nurses and midwives beginning in our emergency departments;
• saving 1,112 temporary nurses by making them permanent;
• abolishing the wages cap and delivering record pay increases for nurses, paramedics and other health workers as well as salary packaging;
• beginning to roll out 500 additional paramedics in regional, rural, and remote communities; and
• doubling the health worker study subsidies.

Quotes attributable to Karen McKeown OAM:
“We are investing and boosting our health workforce to improve health outcomes, it’s as simple as that”.