Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise to pay tribute to doctors and health professionals everywhere, but especially those in our rural towns and those who train them. James Cook University in my home town of Townsville can lay claim to being Australia's most successful university in producing medical graduates who go on to work as doctors in regional, rural and remote locations. It is the only university contracted by the federal government to offer the Australian General Practice Training program, which delivers across 90 per cent of Queensland, servicing about 1.6 million people, including two-thirds of the state's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Seventy-five per cent of the almost 1,800 JCU medical graduates since 2005 have gone on to work in regional and remote locations for periods of 12 months or more, and of that number 1,000 are still in those locations—an extraordinary achievement. Of the 424 GP fellows who completed general practice training with JCU, four out of five were working in regional and remote locations six months post fellowship. JCU's model relies heavily on practical training in rural locations so participants can live, learn and work with qualified doctors to see what it's really like. One GP involved in this training who I'd like to mention is Dr Leonie Fromberg, from the Flinders Medical Centre in Cloncurry in north-western Queensland. She and others like her make JCU's program a shining light in medical training in this country. I'm proud to support the university's efforts in this endeavour and I'm proud to be part of a federal government that has a ministry dedicated to rural health and rural doctor training. I encourage any medical students wanting to learn the whole range of skills to go west, where the traffic is light, the air is clean and the people are friendly.