Doctors demand fairness for medical prac students
ASMOF NSW - The Doctors Union.
ASMOF NSW – The Doctors Union is calling on the Federal Government to extend the Commonwealth Prac Payment to medical students undertaking mandatory unpaid clinical placements.
The Federal Government recently announced the payment would be expanded to students in ten additional allied health disciplines from 1 July 2027. The CPP is means tested and provides eligible students with up to $338.60 a week while completing mandatory placements. Medical students remain excluded.
Medical students complete between 2,000 and 4,000 hours of mandatory unpaid clinical placement, the largest placement requirement of any Australian health degree. This compares with accreditation minimums of 800 hours for nursing and 1,000 hours for social work, both of which are already covered by the payment.
ASMOF NSW President Dr Nicholas Spooner said the exclusion was fundamentally unfair and undermined efforts to build the medical workforce Australia needs at a critical time.
“On any hospital ward, medical students are training alongside nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy students who are eligible for paid prac.
“Yet the students completing the greatest number of mandatory unpaid placement hours are the only ones receiving absolutely nothing. It simply doesn’t make sense.
“There appears to be an assumption that medical students do not need financial support, but that is absolutely not supported by the evidence.
“The reality is that ‘placement poverty’ has a high cost on the mental well-being of medical students. 20 per cent of medical students experience suicidal ideation and 27 per cent experience symptoms of depression during their degree.
“The difficulty of simply trying to make ends meet while undertaking a punishing workload of study and training takes an enormous toll on medical students, which payment for prac time would help alleviate.”
Dr Spooner said extending paid prac was also an important investment in workforce sustainability, particularly in rural and regional communities where students face additional travel, relocation and accommodation costs.
“In 2024-25 NSW Health spent over $1.3 billion on Visiting Medical Officers, up from $1.08 billion two years earlier, with the NSW Auditor-General identifying difficulty recruiting and retaining a skilled rural workforce as a significant driver of VMO reliance.
“But extending the prac payment to eligible final-year medical students nationally would only cost approximately $15 million to $24 million a year, less than two per cent of what NSW alone spent on VMOs in a single year.
“Supporting students to complete their medical degrees and undertake rural placements is far cheaper and more sustainable than continually paying VMOs to fill gaps after workforce shortages have become entrenched.
“Placement poverty restricts who can afford to finish medicine and ultimately reduces the number and diversity of doctors entering our health system.
“We call on the Federal Government to immediately extend the Commonwealth Prac Payment to all eligible medical students on the same payment rate, eligibility criteria and means-testing arrangements that apply to other healthcare students.”
Contact details:
Darren Rodrigo 0414 783 405