However, rural health experts have raised some legitimate concerns about how the extra money promised by the Government will translate to additional training places within regional areas and how those trainee doctors will receive their training and be encouraged to remain in rural areas.

Money is required to not only make places available to doctors needing to train in regions like ours, but it is also needed to make the infrastructure available to those students, including provision of those with the ability to teach.

Doctors, whether they are GPs or specialists, are for the most part already stretched as they tend to their patients and their own practice. They have some capacity to teach but the Government can’t expect them to continue to take on more and more students without reaching capacity.

Providing sufficient resources to train these students is also imperative if they are to have a good experience while in a regional area, something that in all likelihood will influence their decision to stay.