A strong foundation for Medicine in Cairns

The College of Medicine and Dentistry Dean, Professor Richard Murray says providing better access to education and professional careers for North Queensland locals provides the best return on investment to the communities JCU serves.

“It’s the base of our entire model: selecting students from our regions and then educating and training them in, with and for the communities that need them most as graduates. It’s our strategy, it’s been effective, and it’s backed by national and international evidence,” Professor Murray says.

“We’re Queensland’s smallest medical school, and yet we're having an outsized impact in terms of graduates who pursue careers in regional, rural and remote communities,” Professor Murray says. “But our task is far from over because we know people in our regions still experience poorer health outcomes than their metropolitan counterparts.

“We need to do more; we need to scale up our intake. The establishment of the foundational years in Cairns is an important step and it’s a positive sign as to what can come if we provide more end-to-end training opportunities for our future medical workforce,” Professor Murray says.

Many of JCU’s medical students come from communities in need of doctors, with more than 80 per cent of JCU students arriving from regional, rural and remote areas.²

“We recognise that distance can be a barrier to accessing education, particularly for those who might be the first in their families to attend university, for those from a lower socioeconomic background, and for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples. Making this course available locally in the foundational years, joined up to the established clinical years, increases community access to medical careers,” Professor Murray says.

JCU’s medical facilities in Cairns are well-placed to receive the new cohort of foundation year students. Located on the JCU Cairns, Nguma-bada campus, Smithfield, first-year students will have access to state-of-the-art learning and teaching facilities including practical labs. Students will receive a blend of online and in-person lectures and tutorials complemented with online tools and resources, and interactive group sessions supported by local academics and senior medical students.

Fostering locals' passion to improve the health of their community

Fifth-year JCU medical student, Carmen Prinsloo, is excited to have more fellow Cairns locals joining her in 2023. She knows the benefit of studying close to home, with her family in Cairns being the driving factor behind her decision to apply to transfer home for years 4-6 of clinical training.

“The support of home was a big drawcard for coming to Cairns. Studying Medicine is intense enough as it is, and I certainly experienced homesickness in my first three years in Townsville. Being able to move back home to a strong support network has helped me focus on my studies,” Carmen says.

As a Cairns local, Carmen has seen the regional city grow significantly in recent years. Now undertaking clinical training at the Cairns Hospital, Carmen has also gained insight into the region’s increasing health care needs.

“It’s an already busy health service that’s only getting busier,” Carmen says. “There is certainly pressure in terms of service delivery, particularly for rural communities around the area that Cairns services. The Royal Flying Doctor Service does a great job filling in some of the gaps, but we just don’t have enough doctors,” Carmen says.

By training in Cairns and undertaking placements in locations such as Innisfail, Carmen has grown passionate about addressing the unique health care needs facing the tropical Far North.

“Training up here allows you to get to know the community and properly understand the health issues we’re facing. We have a lot of First Nations patients at the Cairns Hospital, and there are cases here that I don’t think you would get in a lot of other places."

“I’ve enjoyed training regionally, I feel like it’s equipping me for the area I want to work in and there are a lot of specialty training opportunities up here. I absolutely see myself doing my junior doctor training years here in Cairns or another regional town,” Carmen says.

JCU’s graduates are uniquely qualified in the fields of rural, remote and Indigenous health and tropical medicine. With a minimum of five months rural and remote clinical placements throughout their degree, students gain extensive and hands-on learning experiences. These placements nurture a connection with community and a passion to pursue a medical career in areas impacted by health workforce shortages.

Sixth-year JCU medical student, Madeleine Donohue, is currently completing her final rural placement with 10 weeks on Thursday Island (Waiben). She has valued her training experiences in the Far North so much that she’s committing to the region long-term, starting with an internship year at the Cairns Hospital in 2023.

“You put down roots when you’re studying and doing placements in regional and rural areas. You get to know the community and their health needs. Undertaking my clinical training at Cairns Hospital, I feel comfortable here and have made great connections with the doctors."
MBBS 6 Student Madeleine Donohue

“I’m keen to stay in Cairns beyond my internship year and pursue GP training in this region because I know how desperately we need more GPs here. The exposure to tropical and Indigenous medicine is what drew me to JCU in the first place, and I know I will get a lot of experience in those fields up here,” Madeleine says.

The impact of JCU’s medical program expansion will extend far beyond the city of Cairns and the surrounding regions. The development will further strengthen the provision of health care for all of Northern Queensland and beyond.

“All communities across the North benefit from the growth of our medical training program,” Professor Murray says. “There's a cascading effect of end-to-end training with students, junior doctors and JCU clinical and academic staff all contributing to the teaching and role modelling effective health care. Bringing the earlier year students to Cairns means we can develop the mature, whole-program model that has been so successful in Townsville for doctors in training to learn together right across the continuum.”

The growth of JCU’s second largest clinical school won’t come at the cost of its largest. In fact, as Professor Murray explains, the move is likely to have a positive flow-on effect on Townsville and Mackay's medical workforce.

“As it currently stands, around 100 or more students leave Townsville each year to take up their clinical phase of training in Cairns and Mackay. With the Cairns expansion, this transfer will no longer happen to the same extent. This will provide the opportunity for more Townsville students to start and finish the course locally which means there will be greater graduate growth in Townsville,” Professor Murray says.

The expansion of the JCU medical program in Cairns is an important element of a broader expansion of the university’s health workforce training in the region and the strengthening partnership with services like the Cairns and Hinterland and Hospital and Health Service (CHHHS).

In 2021, JCU established its Pharmacy degree on Cairns, Nguma-bada campus, Smithfield. JCU's highly successful Dentistry program continues to expand as well, with plans to increase the student intake by 15 in 2023 through the reactivation of its secondary teaching clinic, bringing the total active clinic spaces to 95. These courses join other health-focused degrees such as Nursing which is already well established in Cairns.

^{Sources [1] Graduate Outcomes Survey, 2016-2020. Raw dataset supplied to JCU by Universities Australia, accessed 27 April 2021. Survey produced and reported by Social Research Centre.
[2] Location at the application of CSPs, JCU Student Management System 2022.}