If the core business of specialist medical colleges is to train Australia’s specialist doctors, then AHPRA’s plan to take on more of the administrative and decision-making burden for overseas-trained specialist doctors should be welcomed, says the Council of Presidents of Medical Colleges (CPMC).
A public consultation paper from the regulator was published earlier this week and details plans for the Medical Board of Australia to begin managing applications, English-language checks and document gathering for specialist doctors who trained outside of Australia.
Medical colleges will still be required to conduct an assessment of each doctor, but the decision on how long the doctors spend under supervision will be down to the medical board.
Professor Kerin Fielding, current chair of the CPMC and president of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, told The Medical Republic that AHPRA’s proposal was a net positive for the medical sector.
While the CPMC was vocally opposed to the creation of the expedited specialist pathway, Professor Fielding stressed that changes to the specialist pathway were a different kettle of fish.
“What is entailed in the reform is a framework that’s delineating clearer roles of the different parties involved in the assessment of an international specialist,” she said.
“It will make it much clearer to all parties – colleges, the regulator, and the international medical graduate –what the roles are.
“It’s one front door. The application is made to the medical board, and then the medical board will assess the applicant, making sure that their visa is appropriate, et cetera – all those regulatory things that AHPRA needs to do – and then the colleges will be involved.”
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Professor Fielding, who was also on the medical board advisory group that formulated the plan, said it would enable the colleges to be more focussed, without losing relevancy.
“The rigorous specialist assessment provided by the colleges remains, so it’s still a highly set bar, and that hasn’t moved. There’s no shift in the bar,” she said.
“We still have a high requirement for the whole assessment process and the training experience of the doctor coming in. We still have expectations.
“It’s just that the regulatory parts are going to be done by AHPRA, and the organisation of the application process will be done by AHPRA, and then once AHPRA has done all of that paperwork, then the paperwork will be sent to the relevant college for assessment.
“The college will say ‘yes, this person can go through this particular pathway’, or ‘we’re really concerned there’s something missing, we need to see more log books, we need to see more information about their training’.
“Then the college and AHPRA will work together. It’s quite a change to the way we’ve done it before, but I think everybody’s happy that this is going to be a better process.”
According to Professor Fielding, any doctors that failed to demonstrate an appropriate level of equivalent training at the application stage would be turned away by AHPRA, without even making it to the college stage.
Internationally trained doctors make up more than 50% of all GPs in Australia, and the RACGP handled 595 new applications for specialist recognition in 2024 alone.
The overwhelming majority of applications came from doctors who trained in the UK, who would now be eligible to go through the expedited specialist pathway and skip the college process altogether.
The Philippines were the next-most common country of specialist general practice qualification, followed by New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Malaysia.
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