Overseas Trained Doctors in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services: A Literature Review

The recruitment of medical practitioners to rural and remote areas as well as to other underserved communities is an international problem. In the Australian context, the burden of health professional shortages is most acutely felt in Indigenous communities, a constituency with profound economic, social, demographic and health disadvantage by comparison with the general population (Armstrong and Van der Weyden 2005; Turrell and Oldenburg 2004), and by contrast to other Indigenous groups in comparable countries (Lavoie 2004; AMA 2004). This has implications for the provision of both government and community-controlled health services to Aboriginal communities. Increasingly, the majority of doctors being recruited to address critical shortages in health system delivery are overseas trained. Despite this, there is little information addressing the extent to which overseas trained doctors are employed in providing services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their professional and social experiences within these practice environments, and the experiences and impact of their employment on health services to Indigenous Australians. The Review considered all relevant research and policy published in both the peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed literature. This was restricted to literature published from 1994, so as to capture the critical policy initiatives impacting on the recruitment and employment of overseas trained doctors introduced from the mid-to late nineties. Judgements about the quality of the research and associated methodologies were not undertaken as part of this review. Given that the topic encompassed several broad subject areas, it was necessary to draw only on information that related to the key objectives of the research, and drew on reviews already conducted, in order to synthesize large subject areas. This is presented in a thematic format.