Lead in First Nations Health (Identified)

Since 1996, UniSC has made a major contribution to building the healthcare workforce of our regions. Each year, more than 1,000 health professionals graduate from UniSC, including nurses, midwives, paramedics and allied health practitioners, with the majority staying in our local communities to work after graduation.

UniSC currently delivers 47 health programs, including 13 nationally-accredited degrees across our five campuses to more than 6,100 equivalent full-time students. Clinical placements for our students are delivered through partnerships with over 280 healthcare providers.

UniSC also has a strong track record in medical program partnership. Since 2018, the University has successfully delivered the Bachelor of Medical Science (pre medicine pathway) in collaboration with Griffith University, supporting 20 commencing students each year who progress on to Griffith University’s Sunshine Coast medical program.

Extending our program offerings to include medicine allows UniSC to contribute to a priority area of need, producing cohorts of skilled medical graduates who will boost the supply and stability of the medical workforce practicing across southern and South West Queensland.

The UniSC medical program supports a number of current national and state strategies and
plans including:

• National Medical Workforce Strategy 2021-2031
• Future focused primary health care: Australia’s Primary Health Care 10 Year Plan
• National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan
• Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) National Workforce Strategy

All highlight priorities including the need to rebalance the supply and distribution of Australia’s medical workforce to improve access for underserved communities, and build the primary care and generalist capabilities of the medical workforce.

• The 2025 AMA Queensland’s Workforce Action Plan has identified the need to reform the medical training pipeline and to address the significant imbalance of generalist skills in comparison to highly specialised practitioners as two key issues facing the Queensland health system.
• A 2025 Queensland Health workforce gap analysis 6 predicts Queensland will require almost 5,300 extra doctors by 2032.

This program will incorporate many features that set it apart from other medical programs and will directly address Government medical workforce priorities.

The vision and model for the program have been developed by UniSC health leaders and external members of our Medical Program Advisory Committee, drawing on their extensive collective expertise in establishing and delivering other medical programs. 

Their first-hand insights into what works well – and the current problems – in medical training has led to an innovative approach to learning delivery that has the potential to transform medical education, particularly in regional and rural areas.

1. Recruit and train more doctors to serve regional, rural and remote Australia
   Strong evidence shows that when medical programs recruit students from the regions where they want graduates to eventually work, and train them in those areas, the graduates are more likely to remain there to practice. Building on this, and in a major departure from traditional medical school models which tend to base students at a central university campus for most of their studies, we will adopt a highly contemporary distributed training model. The UniSC program will base students in regional training hubs, including (Modified Monash Model classification) MM1, MM2, MM3 and MM5 communities, from the commencement of their studies, and support them to remain in those hubs, typically for the full six years of the degree. This extended immersion in their communities will strengthen students’ community identity, support meaningful relationships, and reduce the well-documented risk of students, particularly rural students, losing connection to their home regions when displaced to major cities. All hubs will incorporate MM5 and/or MM6 communities, and all students will have the opportunity to elect a final year extended pre-internship placement in a rural or remote community (MM5-7). Program delivery will be enabled through contemporary digital technologies connecting students and educators across hubs and building strong digital competencies that will help to prepare students for future technology-enabled healthcare. Students will undertake academic and pre-clinical learning from their hubs, supported by in-person and networked teaching. Clinical learning will include extended general practice and hospital placements undertaken in health facilities located across their hub catchments. During this time, they will periodically travel to the University’s main campus at Sippy Downs on the Sunshine Coast for intensive laboratory blocks. Some may need to attend placements at specialist/tertiary health facilities to undertake clinical training where this is not available from the health services within their hubs.
2. Address a worsening general practitioner shortage
   Our curriculum will focus on developing the skills and knowledge required for general practice and generalist medicine, being the fields of medicine through which the majority of people obtain medical care, supported as necessary by acute and specialist services. We believe that supporting students to develop their professional identity in general practice will result in more graduates seeking to work in general practice. For those who ultimately elect to pursue other specialist medical career paths, the early and deep understanding of primary care will help them to more effectively integrate the care they provide to patients with the primary health system.
   Our curriculum will be adapted and contextualised to meet the unique requirements of our communities and to ensure graduates are equally proficient for both general practice and the hospital setting of their internship and residency.
   Clinical training will be based around general practice placements at each year level with blended in-hospital training to ensure a generalist, community-based model of healthcare as the foundational understanding of medicine. Longitudinal clinical placements will allow students to integrate into practices, rural hospitals and aged care facilities as supportive, functional clinicians improving the clinical and research output, efficiency and quality of the practices at which they are placed.
   Each student will be assigned a primary care doctor as a formal mentor for the duration of the program, supporting the development of their professional identity in primary care.
   
3. Improve the health of, and the health services provided to, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
   In addition to preferencing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants for admission to the medical program, we will ensure that all medical students acquire a sound understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and develop capabilities to deliver healthcare to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a culturally-safe way.
   We will also engage deeply with the Aboriginal communities across our region to encourage more young Indigenous people to aspire to a future career in medicine. We will replicate for medicine the highly successful UniSC “Capture and Keep” program. This culturally-led initiative provides students with academic, cultural and emotional support through their entire student journey and has resulted in increasing numbers of UniSC Indigenous nursing and midwifery students being successfully recruited, retained and transitioned into the workforce.
   

Focus on an under-utilised and under-served region to source our medical training

The UniSC medical program will be anchored across 18 Local Government Areas (LGAs) from the high-growth population centres on the east coast including Moreton Bay in the south to Hervey Bay in the north, and west towards the Queensland border.
The footprint has been intentionally selected as a region of medical workforce shortage and includes outer-urban, regional and rural populations with increasing prevalence of chronic and comorbid conditions. Furthermore, the footprint includes substantial areas and significant clinical training sites that currently undertake limited, or no medical student training.
These LGAs currently have a combined estimated population of 1.4 million and include some of Australia’s fastest growing and ageing populations. The footprint is home to over 50,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and includes some of Queensland’s most medically underserved communities. 
Local health leaders have described this footprint as a “vulnerable corridor” with respect to GP and general medical workforce. In 2022, all but three of the eighteen LGAs had medical practitioner deficits when compared to major cities including:

• Total medical practitioner deficits ranging from 10 to 429 medical practitioners per 100,000 population, and
• General Practitioner deficits ranging from 8 to 106 GPs per 100,000 population, with three of the LGAs (Barcoo, Diamantina, and Quilpie) recording no GPs within their local government areas in 2022. 

There are of course many communities across this vast region that enjoy access to high-quality and stable local medical care from skilled and committed doctors.
However, there are many other communities, particularly regional and rural communities, who are living in veritable ‘doctor deserts’ and for whom access to local medical care is disproportionately difficult to obtain. 
For these communities, the only options available to access medical services may be to travel long distances, or for the local health services to engage locum and international medical graduates (IMGs), with over-dependence on these options creating financial, continuity-of-care, and workforce stability challenges.

Rebalance the supply and distribution of a medical workforce through an admissions process that positively discriminates in favour of Indigenous, rural and local applicants

As well as encouraging general applicants from across the program’s geographic footprint, admission processes will preference targeted intakes from underrepresented groups including:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants; and
• Applicants from regional, rural and remote areas across the program footprint (MM3-7).

We are also planning a targeted pathway for non-medically registered
health clinicians.

The admission process will select students based on the qualities that define a good medical practitioner, such as a strong motivation to become a doctor, as well as empathy,  compassion and problem solving, along with the ability to know their limitations and when to seek support.

We contend that too many medical programs heavily emphasise unrealistically high measures of academic performance when selecting students. Within our communities, we have witnessed many worthy local applicants to medical programs passed over in favour of applicants from outside of the region who have high tertiary-entrance (ATAR) scores, who then mostly return home or take up positions elsewhere after completing their degrees. To overcome this, our admission criteria will incorporate thresholds of prior academic performance, but avoid a pattern of admitting students based predominantly on unrealistic ATAR scores.

A focus on learning outcomes, regardless of where the learning occurs

The program will provide early clinical exposure across diverse healthcare settings including general practices, hospitals, residential aged care, urgent care, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations and other community-based health services that are located within commutable distances from each study hub.

We recognise the rich learning experiences that exist in all healthcare settings and the ability for students to achieve learning outcomes within diverse environments.

Long-term integrated placements that allow stability, promote deep learning, and benefit placement sites

Many traditional medical programs revolve around a model whereby students rotate across placement sites for short, often observational, placement blocks which allow minimal opportunity for students to build connection with, or deliver tangible benefits to, their placement sites. The UniSC program’s use of longitudinal integrated placements will replace traditional short, fragmented rotations, allowing students to develop strong professional relationships with supervisors, health services, patients and communities.

Longitudinal models are recognised as highly effective in developing primary care competencies, assisting in the formation of strong professional identity in generalist practice, and increasing the likelihood that graduates will return to the regions in which they trained. Extended immersion also strengthens placement site capacity by enabling students to contribute meaningful service value throughout their clinical learning.

Under current planning, the medical program will operate from five hubs, serving the outer metropolitan and adjoining rural areas of the Sunshine Coast and Caboolture, the agricultural basin of the North Burnett, and the rural areas of the Fraser and Cooloola Coasts. Students will also have the opportunity to elect a final year extended pre-internship placement in a remote community (MM5-7). By delivering the entire six-year program from these distributed hubs, students who are admitted to the program from across these regions will have the opportunity to remain in their home communities while undertaking their studies. They will retain access to stable support networks, and benefit from the ability to retain stable local housing and employment necessary to support their studies.

Leveraging existing infrastructure

Four of the proposed hubs will be based at existing UniSC campuses (Caboolture, Gympie, Fraser Coast and Sunshine Coast), utilising existing infrastructure, minimising the need for new construction, and enabling immediate access to purpose-built learning spaces, IT platforms and student support services. The fifth hub (proposed for Gayndah) will likely require capital infrastructure, possibly supported through the RHMT Rural Clinical Schools program.

We have undertaken early engagement with, and received positive feedback from, The University of Queensland (UQ) in relation to UniSC potentially collaborating on opportunities to establish, and share access to, training facilities that would complement UQ’s existing and extensive rural clinical training network. We are also investigating the use of existing Regional University Study Hubs as teaching sites, particularly in our more remote areas of operation.

The University has formed a highly-experienced and capable team to lead the initial stages of development of the medical program.

Leaders include:

Professor Mike Wilmore, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic)

Professor Michael Wilmore is an experienced academic leader who has held senior academic positions in universities in Australia and the UK.

As Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Wilmore oversees the academic functions of UniSC and related support areas.

His portfolio includes UniSC’s schools, including the School of Health.

Prior to joining UniSC in June 2023, Professor Wilmore served for two periods as the Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) of the University of New England with responsibility for the University’s three faculties, including the School of Medicine which offers a Joint Medical Program in collaboration with the University of Newcastle. He co-chaired the JMP steering committee in his role as DVC. He has extensive experience in academic governance and program accreditation.

Professor Scott Kitchener, Professor of General Practice and Rural and Remote Medicine

With almost 40 years’ experience in medicine as a practicing clinician, manager, educator, public health physician and researcher, Professor Kitchener brings a comprehensive and unique skill set, including in-depth knowledge of the geographic footprint across which the UniSC medical program will operate having lived and practiced in the region.

Professor Kitchener established the highly successful Griffith University rural clinical school network across the Darling Downs and South Burnett regions of southern Queensland. As the first academic appointment to the UniSC medical program, the University is making a powerful statement about the importance of general practice and rural and remote medicine to its medical program.

Professor Tony Perkins, Foundation Dean of Health

Professor Perkins was Head of Medical Sciences (2008-2011) and the Dean Academic (2012-2018) at Griffith University. He was heavily involved in the establishment of the Griffith Medical Program at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital in 2017.

He took up the role as the Foundation Dean of Health at UniSC in 2022.

He brings over 30 years of experience in tertiary education in health programs and is well placed to oversee the development of the UniSC program until the appointment of a Dean of Medicine.

Peter Westwood, Senior Program Development Manager – Medicine

Peter Westwood brings over 28 years’ experience in the administration/management of universities and health research organisations including: Griffith University (where he was involved in the start-up teams establishing new medical and dental programs, and securing funds to support the establishment of a multi-site rural clinical school); the University of Sydney (Manager, University Centre for Rural Health); James Cook University (Director of Operations, Division of Tropical Health and Medicine; and Operations Manager, Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine); and the Townsville Hospital and Health Service (Manager, Research).

Support and advice are being provided by the external members of our Medical Program Advisory Committee, including:

• Professor David Wilkinson, National Clinical Lead for CPD, RACGP; Senior Medical Officer, Queensland Health; Chair Sunshine Coast Health Institute
• Dr Jon Harper President, Sunshine Coast Local Medical Association
• Dr Evan Jones Director, Health Hub Doctors
• Associate Professor John Adie, Urgent Care Specialist, ForHealth and UniSC
• Professor Richard Murray, Senior Clinical Lead, Rural Health Systems, Queensland Health
• Kim Pryce-Lunt, Director, ForHealth Queensland
• Dr Shea Spierings, Chair, Country to Coast QLD; Director, Institute for Urban Indigenous Health; Board Member, Metro North HHS; Board Member, Health and Wellbeing Queensland; and
• Senior representatives from public health services (Wide Bay Hospital and Health
  Service and Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service) are also participating in the Advisory Committee.