Published 16 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4843
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4843

News

Australia operates "closed shop" to restrict doctors from overseas, say critics

Melissa Sweet

1 Sydney

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Overseas trained doctors seeking to work in Australia often face unwarranted restrictions on practising, say leading Australian medical specialists and healthcare reform advocates.

Ian Hickie, a psychiatrist at the University of Sydney, says that shortages in the medical workforce are being exacerbated by restrictions caused by an "evil axis" of immigration policy, health regulations, and the monopoly of specialist medical colleges over training and accreditation.

Australia was allowing a "closed shop" to control its medical workforce in a way that would not be tolerated in any other industry, he said. Concerns about quality and safety were often used as a "smokescreen" to maintain the position of local graduates, he added.

"We’re quite happy to have all these overseas trained doctors work in our system, so long as they don’t exercise the same economic and civil rights [as Australian graduates]," said Professor Hickie.

The recently publicised case of a Canadian doctor . . . [Full text of this article]


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Great Barriers
William McGuire
bmj.com, 19 Nov 2009 [Full text]
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