AMA VICDOC_Spring 2026_09.09.2026 - Flipbook - Page 31
I’VE BEEN GOING TO AS MANY MEETINGS AS
I CAN TO HEAR DIRECTLY FROM MEMBERS
ABOUT WHERE PROBLEMS EXIST AND HOW
WE CAN SOLVE THEM."
The main challenge facing
women doctors today is the
unfolding workforce crisis
that has been created by an
oversupply of medical students
and pre-vocational doctors,
and an undersupply of training
positions.
This is something that every junior doctor
has noticed. The pathway to an accredited
position is getting longer. Jobs are tighter.
We can’t ask women doctors to choose
between starting a family and securing a
career pathway, but that’s exactly what
will happen if changes aren’t made.
There’s no such thing as a
typical week in the working
life for me. I'm a locum medical
oncologist, so I fly around the
country filling in gaps anywhere
that they may be.
When we don’t get a place, we can feel like
I usually spend five days a week working
we’ve failed as an individual; maybe I just
in a hospital anywhere in Australia. My kids
wasn’t good enough, I should have done
spend the day having a wonderful time
more unpaid research, more volunteering,
with their nanny hitting all the tourist
another course. Maybe next year I’ll get in.
spots. Yes, they come with me – we're a
But it’s not us – it's the system. There is
a huge backlog of prevocational junior
doctors, and it’s getting worse every year.
In 2024, 36% of prevocational doctors got
into an accredited training position each
year, including General Practice. By 2048,
only around 15% will get onto a training
program each year. This is a disaster.
We're creating a Hunger Games scenario
for training positions, where people
travelling circus of me, our nanny, and our
two preschool-aged children. The weeks
between jobs are a great opportunity to
throw myself into working for AMA Victoria.
We’re raising our kids bilingually; I only
speak Japanese with the kids, and their dad
only speaks English. I learned fluent French
in school, and I taught myself to speak
Japanese and lived in Japan for a year.
I feel strongly about languages. Australia
is blessed to have so many people who
are scrambling over each other to be
can speak multiple languages; it’s a skill
at the top of the pyramid and grasping
we should pass on to the next generation.
at an ever-smaller pile of jobs. This is
When we are out and about people like
compounded for women because this
to guess what language we’re speaking.
happens during their fertile years.
The most common guess is Spanish!
31
