![The search for more regional doctors in SA has been a key focus for SA Health over recent years. Picture by Shutterstock The search for more regional doctors in SA has been a key focus for SA Health over recent years. Picture by Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/195995809/a1251459-687f-4375-934f-f7afbddc3697.jpg/r0_22_5010_3006_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The search for more general practitioners in regional areas has led SA Health to introduce strategies to try and encourage doctors into the roles.
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SA Health Rural Support Service Executive Director Debbie Martin said the challenge of finding rural doctors was not limited to South Australia.
"The shortage we have is an issue for all of Australia and it's not only a South Australian issue," she said.
"We've got to think about the strategies we can put in place to make South Australia the first choice option.
"These are not new issues and they're complex and not easily solved and are multilayered."
A particular plan used to address the issue is the Workforce Strategy.
"We did a lot of work in the Rural Support Service in 2019 to bring people together and think about ideas as to how we can work together to improve the workforce," she said.
"Not only in the medical area, but also nursing, allied health, aboriginal health and we also did some work for ZAS and Dental.
"What we're trying to do is look at multiple strategies that we can do to try and retain doctors and to get them into their career as early as possible, because often once people have settled somewhere it's difficult to get them to move."
A key focus of the Rural Support Service team has been the set-up of the Rural Generalist Program that was thought of after the Workforce Strategy.
"The purpose of this unit is to provide strategic support and advice to the local health networks to help them train doctors and build our workforce," she said.
"We do a lot of liaising with all the different partners for the education and training aspects, while ensuring there's quality control of the training as well as trying to increase the uptake of doctors coming into the country.
"The unit's only been in place since 2020 and it's a partnership between the six local health networks, and it brings together all the Adelaide universities, the Rural Doctors Workforce Agency, the Australian College of General Practice and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine."
Ms Martin said the program also had SA Health keeping in touch with stakeholders along with observing what the interstate universities and programs undertaken are.
"While we're trying to do something at a country wide level in SA, we're also trying to ensure we stay linked up and look at what everyone is doing nationally," she said.
The unit had already shown some positive signs in terms of increasing doctor numbers in rural areas.
"There's been some success with the program in terms of increasing the numbers in some areas," she said.
"We do rotations in which doctors do training in metro areas and they rotate out to country areas.
"In 2019 we had four doctors doing that and in 2023 we've got 21, we also have doctors that do their internships in regional areas and we've got doctors working full time in regional areas."
Through the programs the capacity to get doctors to regional and rural areas has been made easier.
"I think the evidence is we've got an increased number of people in the programs we're running," she said.
"The other thing I think we've done well is retaining our doctors.
"We actually negotiated a couple years ago some changes to our GP agreement about how we pay our doctors in rural SA and we're in the process of negotiating that again at the moment."
Ms Martin said the negotiation a couple of years ago led to a change in the payment mechanisms and provided greater flexibility for doctors.
"We're not seeing a significant exit from rural medicine and the trick is to build the next generation," she said.
Through different groups within the medical industry working together the desired goal of getting more GPs in rural and regional areas will be made easier, Ms Martin said.
"I can see that if we keep working together and thinking what everyone can do to solve this problem, I think we'll get to a point that it will get better, " she said.
"There's no magic wand though and this is an issue across Australia and there are lots of components that all need to work together to actually address this issue.
"I can see that the number of young doctors coming out to regional areas through the Rural Generalist Program has increased."