Doctors in training: a.k.a. cheap labour

Each new facet of knowledge is just placed on top of the pyramid of training, so that the pyramid gets higher and higher and is administered by grey, old men sitting in the colleges who are not subject to genuine scrutiny or competition.

In my own experience, the main gripe from colleagues in training is the sheer length of time it takes to come out the other side. They feel that training is a euphemism for serving as cheap labour in under-funded public hospitals.

While they try to establish lives outside their work and deal with all the pressures of modern life, the mountain to climb in their work seems to be insurmountable. And this realisation hits people who have been at the top of almost everything they have done, especially when it comes to academic achievement.

There is a creeping sense in the middle stages of medical training that things should have turned out much better. There is no job in which expectations are so distant from the reality.

The problem is only likely to worsen, considering the numbers of medical students around the country is set to almost triple in the next decade, with only Queensland training more students than Victoria.

Some of the country's best and brightest young people are being short-changed by a system that does not value them and places undue demands on their lives, unsupported by evidence.

Unfortunately, the arrangement suits many people in authority, both within the profession and in government.