Living and training in the Northern Territory (NT) offers some unique and exciting opportunities for medical practitioners. To showcase the training opportunities for the local NT medical workforce, the Flinders NT Regional Training Hub and Top End Health Services hosted two medical career expos on 30th September and 1st October 2019 at the Royal Darwin Hospital.

NT Medical Program Students, Interns and Junior Medical Officers had the opportunity to meet with 21 organisations representing medical specialist training colleges, local NT training and employment organisations. Each organisation delivered a presentation followed by 90 minutes of networking with the potential trainees and health professionals. The presentations were video conferenced to other sites within the NT including Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Nhulunbuy and Katherine.

Dr Olivia O’Donoghue, Medical Director of the Flinders NT Regional Training Hub, says that “it is a wonderful opportunity for our students and junior medical officers to discuss their career aspirations and training options.

“We need to strongly support our future workforce and these expos will enable us to assist with their career pathway planning”.

The expos were deemed to be a great success by the organisations and participants, who were keen for this event to be delivered again in 2020.

The Flinders NT Regional Training Hub is one of 26 Regional Training Hubs established in 2017 all over Australia as part of the Integrated Rural Training Pipeline Initiative. The objectives of the regional training hubs are to:

• Improve the coordination of the stages of medical training to enable students intending to practise rurally to complete as much of their medical training as possible within regional and rural areas
• Identify students with an interest in practising rurally and facilitate access to networked rural training opportunities at an early stage in their careers
• Develop regional training capacity by supporting current supervisors of clinical training, assisting health services in obtaining accreditation for new training positions, and supporting local medical practitioners to become clinical supervisors
• Strengthen existing, and develop new, connections with key stakeholders to improve the continuity of training for medical students/trainees within their region and
• Identify regional medical workforce needs and use this information to prioritise activity.

Contact us at fnt.rth@flinders.edu.au to find out more about how the Flinders NT Regional Training Hub can support your training and workforce options.