Innovations in medical education to meetworkforce challenges

Abstract

The winds of change world-wide have swept medical education in the last fifteen years. Today, Australia's medicalstudents are older and drawn from more diverse socio-economic, ethnic and geographic backgrounds than twenty yearsago, and there is now an equal mix of men and women in medical school. Admission policies have been rewritten tobroaden access with a range of entry options now available including direct entry from high school and graduate entryfollowing a first degree. Curricula have been revised and modes of learning transformed. This paper describes thesechanges and discusses the implications for medical schools and for planning the future workforce.