Medical graduates already find it tough to get practical training. Picture: iStock Source: Supplied

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was in Perth last week spruiking the government’s plans to invest in the Curtin Medical School in Midland, about 20km northeast of the city. The school is expected to cater for 60 medical students by 2017 and 110 a year by 2022.

But the Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Brian Owler has criticised the plans, saying there was no shortage of medical students.

“There is no evidence for the need of a new medical school anywhere in Australia right now. We need training places, not new medical schools,” he said.

Last year there was shortfall of 84 GP training places last year, he said.

“(We) need to make sure we train those medical graduates to become the GPs and specialists that this country needs.”

The head of the Western Australian branch of the AMA went further telling the ABC that the new school “would be one of the worst decisions made in WA’s health sector”.

Dr Michael Gannon said there were already too many medical graduates, the problem was providing them with practical training.

“Right now we have medical students where there’s 10 or 12 of them sitting around a teaching ward with a patient; it’s common for medical students to graduate without having delivered a baby,” Dr Gannon told ABC.

“They’re getting less and less experienced. Into this environment we now have a decision, which on the face of it, looks like we’ll have another 60 to 80 medical students who just won’t have jobs.”

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Mr Abbott defended the medical school that will cost the government $20 million once fully operational, saying it will help to address WA’s shortage of about 1,000 doctors compared to other states.

According to the West Australian, the state has the fewest doctors per head of population in the nation and the prime minister said the new school would reduce the number of overseas-trained doctors in WA, which sits at 38 per cent.

“Western Australia needs more local doctors,” he told reporters on Sunday.

The school will underpin a new Curtin University campus near the Midland Health Campus, which is run by St John of God, and will help WA Premier Colin Barnett deliver a key 2013 election promise.

Mr Barnett said the school would bring prestige to the eastern suburbs, which had felt a “little bit left behind”.

“It’s long, long overdue that the eastern suburbs had tertiary education available,” Mr Barnett said.

WA wouldn’t start to see the effects of the new medical school until into the 2020s, the premier said.

The Curtin Medical School will open in 2017 and offer a five-year undergraduate medical degree.