Australia faces an ongoing shortage of GPs. Why can’t we just train more GPs?

If you have, there is a critical shortage of GPs in Australia – and there is a shortage developmentit is predicted that by 2048 the number of general practitioners will be 8,600.

So why can’t we just train more? Despite novel programs attracting medical graduates, there are many reasons why Australia is struggling to keep up with demand.

Why is the demand for primary care physicians increasing?

Demand for GP services is increasing as our population changes.

Between June 2019 and June 2023, the population of Australia increased by 5.2%.

But more importantly, our society is aging. During the same period, the number of people aged 65 and over increased increased by 13.1%.

Older patients, especially those with many chronic diseaseshave a much greater demand for GP services than younger, vigorous patients.

For example, in 2023, patients aged 10-14 visited general practitioners on average 3.5 times. On average, people are 85 years of age or older 17.3 Visits to the family doctor in the same year.

An aging population means that demand for GP services is growing faster than the population.

More GPs do not mean more visits

The number of GPs in Australia is actually growing. In recent years it has increased by 5.1%, with 37,530 in 2019 to 39,449 in 2024. This reflects overall population growth.

However, the number full-time primary care physicians fell by 1.3% during the same period.

What’s going on? There are two main issues.

First, there has been a historical trend over the years in which male primary care physicians work fewer hours per week.

Second, for decades, a percentage of primary care physicians have been women. They are now almost the same women general practitioners (49.6%) as men (50.4%).

Women primary care physicians have traditionally worked fewer hours than male primary care physicians. This is partly due to women taking medications they have greater caring responsibilities than their peers.

Taken together, these two factors mean that while the overall number of GPs has increased, the number of full-time GPs has decreased. This further exacerbates the shortage of primary care physicians.

General practice does not draw graduates

As a profession, general practice struggles to attract novel graduates.

The most recent report from the Medical School Outcomes Database showed only only 10.5% graduates chose general practice as their first chosen specialization.

Even combined with those students who said they were considering a career as a general education teacher in rural areas (further 7.0%) this is not enough to meet the growing demand and further efforts must be made to attract novel graduates.

Why isn’t he attractive?

1. Lower financial incentives compared to other graduates

Primary care physicians earn less on average than other medical specialties. IN 2021-22GPs (including full-time and part-time) reported an average total income of A$142,279. That’s almost half of what psychiatrists earn ($268,135) and significantly less than surgeons ($373,720) and anesthesiologists ($432,234).

Additionally, general practice faces greater pressure than most specialties in terms of bulk patient billing. Bulk billing means the charge is covered by the Medicare rebate, at no cost to the patient.

However, annual increases in Medicare rebates have been well below the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and for several years completely frozen.

At the same time, the costs of providing care in general practice (including rent, administrative staff and equipment) were rising much faster than increase in Medicare rebates. This limits GPs who continue to bulk bill.

An enhance in discounts on bulk billing incentive items in 2023 likely alleviated some of this pressure and coincided with an enhance in patient volume settled in bulk.

2. Learning path

Another issue in attracting future primary care physicians is the required training path for physicians after graduating from medical school.

During medical school, all medical students spend time in general practice. Those who wish to become GPs after this must undertake a postgraduate general practice training program after completing the first year of postgraduate study (called internship).

However, after graduating from medical school, they must only work in hospitals, where they come into contact with colleagues who have almost always had hospital training (and have never worked as GPs). This means that general practice is becoming less evident as a career option for many teenage doctors.

3. Terms

Another barrier is that people who leave hospital work to undertake GP training lose many rights, such as pay cuts and paid parental leave.

Junior doctors of the hospital are employees below doctors awardwhich includes paid parental leave.

But GP trainees are usually employed under Art minimum training standardswhich is not a reward and does not provide for compulsory parental leave paid for by the employer. (They may still be eligible for the Paid Parenting Scheme through Centrelink.)

This comes at a time when they often have significant student debt and may be considering starting a family.

What is being done to attract novel graduates?

As a consequence of all these factors, over the last few years Training places for general practitioners have not been completed completely.

The good news is that enrollment in GP training is going in the right direction.

For 2025 Australian GP training program items they are fullwhich means an enhance of almost 20% compared to the number of enrollments in 2024. This means that 1,504 teenage doctors accepted internships for 2025.

It is still too early to say whether this enhance is a one-off, why the improvement has occurred and whether it will continue.

There are also several other pathways into GP training, such as: including 32 places for doctors who wish to train in Aboriginal health services in rural and remote areas, and some self-financed training options.

What else do we need?

These are steps in the right direction. However, much more needs to be done to attract a novel generation of graduates who can enjoy learning benefits work in general practice.

We need sustainable strategies to address inequalities between general practice and other specialties, especially in terms of pay and training conditions.

Without support for general practice – which it provides first point of contact, comprehensive, coordinated and long-term care – we risk moving to a system that fragments care, with Australians increasingly receiving fragmented health care.