How dependent is Australia on IMGs? Here are the numbers by specialty
IMGs have gone from 34% of GPs to 42% in around 10 years.
The Federal Government doesn’t doubt that Australia needs more IMGs to patch the medical workforce, hence its plan to shrink the role of medical colleges in specialist IMG assessments.
But data show that Australia is already more reliant on IMGs than it was 10 years ago, especially for general practice, emergency medicine and psychiatry.
Newly released Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data reveal that IMGs made up 42% of the GP workforce in 2022, up from 34% in 2013.
It is worth pointing out that the proportion of final-year Australian medical students saying general practice is their first-choice specialty has also fallen in recent years, hitting a low of 10.5% in 2023 (the figure does not include rural generalism).
