Addressing the shortage of psychiatrists in Australia: strategies to improve recruitment among medical students and prevocational doctors

Access to timely and effective care is a primary goal for mental health services. However, chronic shortages in Australia's psychiatric workforce continue to plague effective service provision. Current projections conservatively predict an alarming undersupply of 124 psychiatrists by 2030, with 43% of psychiatrists intending to retire in the next decade (Department of Health, 2017). The recruitment of overseas psychiatrists has long been used to fill these gaps, yet this remains an unsustainable long-term strategy. While the government's recent AU$1 million investment into 30 new psychiatry training positions partly addresses these gaps, these additional positions will need to be matched with increased numbers of trainees. In this article, we describe factors that draw medical students and prevocational doctors into psychiatry and outline evidence-based recommendations that may increase overall recruitment numbers.