South West Health Care will receive $300,000 to increase training for medical specialists to help ease the shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals.
Announcing the funding from the Strengthening Medical Specialist Training Program, Gayle Tierney, Member for Western Victoria, said the funding boost was part of a $21 million Brumby Government funding boost to health services across Victoria.
“The Brumby Government is taking action to ensure Victorians have access to world-class healthcare by training even more health professionals to meet increasing demand in areas of workforce shortage,” Ms Tierney said.
This funding will support South West Health Care to fund four training positions in Psychiatry, Paediatric Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and General Surgery.”
“The program focuses on supporting disciplines to ensure that Victoria’s future medical workforce receives the right training in the right environment,” she said.
“The Government will deliver $21 million to the Strengthening Medical Specialist Training Program to benefit metropolitan and regional health services.
Health Minister Daniel Andrews said the Strengthening Medical Specialist Training program, which started in 2008, provides a structured approach to increase medical specialist training.
“This program funded a total of 111 positions in 2008, which will increase to 113 positions in 2009 – 56 in metropolitan Melbourne and 57 in rural Victoria.
“The program provides funding in targeted specialties for up to three years to assist health services boost the number of accredited medical specialist training positions,” he said.
Key specialities identified for the 2009 program were endocrinology, general medicine, geriatric medicine, neurology, orthopaedic Surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, urology, gastroenterology, general surgery, nephrology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, rheumatology, pathology and psychiatry.
The Victorian Government has boosted doctor numbers by more than 2500 since 1999, while the number of nurses working at South West Health Care has increased by 29.3% and by more than 8800 across Victoria.