According to a research team at Monash University in Victoria, medical schools should give some kind of priority to students wanting to pursue a medical degree who come from rural areas. The researchers stated that these students were more likely to become doctors in the rural areas in which they grew up, and currently rural areas are facing shortages in their medical workforce.

However, rural students may actually have a harder time than usual studying at Melbourne University because new standards put in place by the school placed restrictions on the number of students from rural areas allowed into its biomedicine degree. In addition, the entry score for the program went up from 88 to 92, which makes it even more difficult for rural students to be accepted.

To help support rural students, the University of Ballarat course that has been around for the last three years gives students an opportunity to study medicine even if they can’t live in a metropolitan area. However, according to coordinator of the UB program Dr. Mark Myers, people typically only think of Melbourne when they think of studying medicine to become a doctor. “Those doing VCE are aware of it, but the broader community is not aware of this project”, he said.

According to Dr. Kim Webber, CEO of Rural Health Workforce Australia, the universities are the ones responsible for training the future workforce and ensuring there are no shortages anywhere.