The growth of medical manpower in New South Wales

The postwar measures taken to increase medical manpower in New South Wales have been most successful, to the extent that the present number of medical practitioners available to the population exceeds the recommended level. These efforts have also been reasonably successful in providing more primary medical care in both country and some metropolitan areas. Calculations have been made to estimate how many doctors will be available to the year 1996 if; (a) present proposed training numbers are continued; (b) medical graduates are reduced by 100 per annum from 1985 (that is, 1980 student intakes); (c) medical graduates are reduced by 200 per annum from 1985. For the purpose of these calculations the immigration of doctors was neglected, which in the past has been responsible for a large percentage of the medical workforce. These conservative estimates show that with the 200 per annum reduction, there would still be an excess of doctors by 1991, but that the doctor/population ratio would be close to the recommended ratio by 1996.