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In this month's issue:
The results of the 2025 Medical Training Survey are just in. The stories trainees share through feedback in this annual survey are compelling and important. We all share responsibility to maintain high standards of medical training and develop effective strategies to address what needs to change.
As we all close out another big year, thank you for your contribution to your communities and our profession, in your daily practice of medicine. The Board wishes you and yours a safe and peaceful festive season.
Dr Susan O’Dwyer Chair, Medical Board of Australia
CONTENT WARNING. This newsletter contains references to sexual misconduct that some readers might find distressing.
If you need help, support is available.
You can access 24-hour phone and online support services from the national sexual assault, family, and domestic violence helpline: 1800 Respect.
13YARN can provide crisis support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Medical practitioners who have had a concern raised about them are encouraged to contact their insurer, professional association or legal adviser for guidance and support. We publish information on general and profession specific support services on Ahpra’s Support services page.
The spotlight is on the quality of medical training in Australia, with the release this month of the results of the 2025 Medical Training Survey (MTS).
After seven years, MTS results are proving remarkably consistent year on year, with 2025 results showing areas of increasing strength and significant issues that stubbornly persist.
Broadly, trainees rate the quality of their medical training very highly, with 89% rating the quality of their clinical supervision and 86% teaching and education sessions as good/excellent.
The MTS is a survey by trainees, for trainees. It’s a longitudinal survey that tracks the quality of medical training, initiated and led by the Medical Board of Australia. It is the only annual, national, profession-wide survey of all doctors in training in Australia. Stringent privacy controls make it safe and confidential for trainees to take part.
Trainees are using the MTS results to shape their choice of training sites and specialties, and health sector stakeholders are using the data to identify hot-spots, address issues and share strengths.
The 2025 results show there have been improvements in clinical supervision, orientation, teaching and education with 83% of trainees recommending their training position and workplace as a place to train.
Pleasingly, training on patient safety is again high.
But the fault lines in the culture of medicine run deep. Work across the profession and the health sector to improve cultural safety and address racism remains urgent and essential.
Unacceptably, the rate of bullying, discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment) and racism sits stubbornly at an average of 30%, and nearly twice that (56%) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainees. And 38% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainees reported experiencing and/or witnessing racism.
MTS results reveal a complex workplace environment, with variations in results between different groups of trainees. Interns and specialist non-GP trainees report having witnessed and/or experienced unacceptable behaviours nearly 20% more often than IMGs and GP trainees.
The source of the unacceptable behaviour experienced and/or witnessed is also changing over time, with a 10% drop longitudinally in senior medical staff as the source of the behaviour (56% in 2020 to 46% in 2025) and a nearly 10% rise in patients and/or patient families/carers (38% in 2020 to 46% in 2025) as the source.
The deficits in the culture of medicine reported by trainees appear to be firmly anchored to wider community attitudes and behaviours.
In 2025, more than 18,000 trainees did the MTS and more international medical graduates than ever before shared their perspectives.
MTS questions are refined each year to generate meaningful data that stakeholders can use more effectively to drive change. New insights in 2025 include:
Many of the most recent generation of medical trainees adding their voice to this important data set had not started medical school when the MTS was established. Seven years on, many of the trainees who lobbied hard to create the MTS are specialists and leaders in the profession. Over time, the MTS has been absorbed into the everyday fabric of medical training.
The stories held in the MTS results are compelling and important. With that, comes a wider shared responsibility across the health sector and the profession to maintain high standards of medical training and develop effective strategies to address what needs to change.
The 2025 MTS results are published now as static reports on the MedicalTrainingSurvey.gov.au website and will be accessible in searchable form in early 2026 in the MTS online database, also on the MTS website.
With strict confidentiality rules in place to protect trainees, the MTS online searchable database can reveal meaningful insights. You can use it to compare trainees’ feedback by specialty and jurisdiction, take a deep dive into the culture and quality of training and make comparisons across sites or specialties.
Family, domestic and sexual violence (FDSV) is an important public health issue in our community. Doctors with the knowledge, skills and attributes to appropriately support people who may be experiencing FDSV can make a significant impact and even save lives.
All doctors who consult with patients can make a difference.
It’s not unusual for a health practitioner to be one of very few people that someone experiencing FDSV sees when the perpetrator of the violence is not present. Understanding the dynamics of FDSV is essential for you to recognise and respond safely and effectively.
As you plan your continuing professional development (CPD) for 2026, please consider integrating training that deepens your knowledge of FDSV.
This might include:
Incorporating FDSV training into your CPD plan can help you to identify and manage patients who are vulnerable or at risk to themselves or others.
There are many resources available if you think there’s room for you to upskill in this area. CPD homes offer modules that count towards your annual CPD. Colleges, including the RACGP, ACRRM, RANZCP and RANZCOG, have resources for medical practitioners.
As well as supporting individuals experiencing FDSV, you can play a role in supporting people who are using FDSV and guiding them towards services that will help them stop the violence.
More information on Ahpra and the National Boards’ approach to FDSV is in the joint position statement reinforcing the importance of the health workforce in identifying and responding to FDSV. It also sets out the consequences for health practitioners who perpetrate this violence.
A new accredited CPD home opened in November 2025.
Accredited by the Australian Medical Council (AMC), Inovating is open to all doctors, becoming the 22nd CPD home in Australia.
Two further CPD homes have also been accredited and will open in 2026. They are the Australian Orthopaedic Association and the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia. Contact information for all AMC-accredited CPD homes, including all of the specialist colleges, is listed on the Board’s CPD page.
You must have a CPD home for 2025 and complete your CPD before 31 December 2025.
Applications are open for a practitioner member on the Victorian Board of the Medical Board of Australia. Applications close Sunday 14 December 2025.
There are multiple vacancies on the Tasmanian Board of the Medical Board of Australia for practitioner members and community members. Applications close Sunday 18 January 2026.
To apply and for more information visit Ahpra’s Statutory appointments page.
A chocolate bar advertisement on Irish television jack-knifed the direction of Dr Susan O’Dwyer’s life. Seeing the ad’s untouched Australian beaches and blue skies, her parents picked up their life in Ireland and moved to the other side of the world.
Often mistaken for an international medical graduate when she opens her mouth, Dr O’Dwyer has called Brisbane home since the age of eight. She’s a proud University of Queensland graduate and medical administrator, alongside her role as Chair of the Medical Board of Australia.
Her early interest in women’s health – she was on the obstetrics and gynaecology specialist training program for some years – gave way to her curiosity about wider health systems issues during her early years in Queensland hospitals. She started a Master of Public Health while an obstetrics and gynaecology registrar, before switching specialist training programs and gaining her FRACMA Fellowship in 2004. She has been the Executive Director of Medical Services at Metro South, Queensland since 2012 and chair and executive sponsor of its Clinical Ethics Committee for 13 years.
The system-wide focus, as well as the interaction with other professions and health executives – clinical directors and the broader healthcare team – is a source of energy and interest.
‘What I really learned from my mentors and teachers in medical administration, beyond the clinical work I had done, was the value of the multi-disciplinary team, the value of the other professions,’ Dr O’Dwyer says.
This was reinforced later in her life as a medical regulator, when she was refreshed by the value of the contribution and perspectives of community members on the Board.
‘Medical education was very medical. As a junior doctor, you didn't have great awareness of the system bigger than yourself, the other professions, what they do,’ Dr O’Dwyer said.
‘As I’ve got older and wiser and gathered experiences along the way, I’ve realised other people can do equally well leading and managing health services and making regulatory decisions and leading and managing policy and standards for the medical profession,’ she says.
Medical workforce – currently a top priority for Australia’s regulators and governments – has been an abiding theme in Dr O’Dwyer’s professional life. She was recruited to the Queensland Department of Health in 2005 after the Patel scandal broke, to establish programs for international medical graduates (IMGs). She was tasked with building better state-wide processes from initial IMG recruitment, through assessment, placement, training and to ongoing support. Over time, these reforms shaped a pitch to health ministers, which led to the establishment of the Competent Authority pathway to registration for IMGs.
She later assumed responsibility for all medical workforce and education in Queensland and building on that experience, was appointed in 2012 to the Queensland Board of the Medical Board of Australia. In 2016, she became chair of the Queensland Board and in parallel, joined the national Medical Board of Australia.
Fast forward nearly 15 years and Dr O’Dywer is again carving new paths to registration for overseas qualified doctors. She is Chair of the Medical Board’s specialist IMG (SIMG) taskforce, leading the creation of a new pathway to specialist registration for eligible SIMGs with specific qualifications, as well as reforms to streamline the specialist pathway. She chairs the Board’s SIMG registration committee.
Beyond workforce, Dr O’Dwyer is keen to shift the Board’s regulatory focus towards guidance and support for doctors in Australia.
‘Keeping abreast of the fast pace of change in the delivery of healthcare is an obvious challenge from a regulatory point of view. More broadly, I think there’s a genuine, positive role for the Board in providing relevant guidance and support to medical practitioners who are also navigating these things,’ Dr O’Dwyer said.
Public trust and confidence in the profession is vital, and an area where Dr O’Dwyer sees a very significant role for the Board. She reflects on the fundamental shift in thinking that's come with research and evidence proving that a culturally or psychologically unsafe workplace is an unsafe place for patients, because of the impacts on clinical care.
‘We know now that how you behave impacts on patients and can potentially cause harm. Culture and behaviour is firmly in the regulatory space,’ she says.
Dr O’Dwyer would like the Board to be seen as a leader in professional standards, as a guide for the medical profession about appropriate ways of practice that justify the trust the community has in doctors.
‘I would like individual practitioners to turn to the Board’s guidance about how to behave appropriately or perform satisfactorily in the workplace. Our standards need to be useful in guiding doctors about how to behave, and enable employers, educators and regulatory decision makers to weed out those folk who aren't behaving in a way that is consistent with good practice,’ she says.
Flexibility in medical training is another innovation she’d like to see, arguing that introducing part time medical education and work options will increase longevity in the profession and make medicine a more satisfying and sustainable profession for more people.
Dr O’Dwyer welcomes the increasing diversity in medical graduates and the profession over time, including the important albeit slow increase in the number of First Nations doctors.
‘For these individuals to achieve their goal of becoming a doctor and be able to show their communities that they too can be what they can see, it’s a wonderful thing,’ Dr O’Dwyer said.
She acknowledges the shared, lifelong journey towards cultural competence everyone in healthcare is taking, towards cultural safety for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
‘Education and re-education and professional development in relation to culture and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, is not a one-off course or something you do just at medical school or as a junior doctor. Cultural safety is something we need to learn and develop professionally. I think we're at the beginning of a journey recognising the importance of that. As a profession, doctors have a big role in contributing to closing the gap. We can do that,’ she said.
The Board has approved the following:
The Board publishes data each quarter on the medical profession. Data are broken down by state and territory and registration type, and for specialists by specialty and field of specialty practice. Visit our Statistics page to view the latest report.
Thank you to all international medical graduates (IMGs) and their authorised representatives. We appreciate your patience as Ahpra works through technical issues that have disrupted your ability to help IMGs get registered.
As a first step, go to Ahpra’s website for updated information to help you help IMGs get to work.
As an authorised representative, you’ll need to set up an Ahpra portal account (if you don’t already have one) and make sure the IMG(s) you’re supporting to apply have nominated you as their authorised representative.
We can then link the authorised representative to the individual practitioner’s application in our system, so you can see the status of the IMG’s application.
While we work on fixing our technical issues, you can send information related to the IMG’s application by email to the IMG’s case officer directly or to Ahpra’s Registration team.
Thanks again for your patience. We know that right now the system isn’t working as we would all like it to.
We know how important international medical graduates (IMGs) are to Australia’s health system and have several projects underway to make the pathway to registration clearer, simpler and faster.
In one part of this work, we’re updating our website with new information that we hope helps you find the pathway to registration that is right for you (or the IMG you’re working with) and connects you with the information you need when you need it.
Use our online self-assessment tool to work out which registration pathway you are eligible for.
There are videos for each type of registration showing our online form. These aim to help IMGs answer the initial questions and choose the right type of registration and right pathway to registration for their circumstance.
We have published new flowcharts for IMGs on each of the registration pathways – Standard, Competent Authority, Specialist and Expedited Specialist.
We are developing detailed checklists for each pathway and registration type; to help IMGs know what information and documents they will need to support their applications. The checklist for documents needed for the Competent Authority pathway is available now. Checklists for other pathways will be published progressively in the weeks ahead.
We are updating the information on other pathway webpages to try to make registration requirements and steps easier for IMGs and employers to understand.
Our application assessment timeframes are back to normal, and we are processing complete applications in less than six weeks. To be on the safe side, we still recommend that you apply at least three months before your intended start date, and we can accept applications as early as six months before you intend to start work.
The Board is reviewing the Registration standard: recency of practice to ensure that it is a relevant and effective regulatory tool that contributes to patient safety and facilitates access to a sustainable health workforce.
We are consulting on a draft revised registration standard for recency of practice which sets out the amount of practice practitioners must do to be registered and what may be required when a practitioner doesn’t meet the standard.
Minor changes to wording and formatting of the existing registration standard are proposed, along with providing increased flexibility for practitioners who have not practised for more than three years to return to practice, while maintaining patient safety.
The public consultation paper is on the Board’s website. Doctors, stakeholders and the public are encouraged to provide feedback on the proposed changes by 2 March 2026. The extended timeframe for the consultation is provided to take into consideration the busy end of year and holiday period.
More registered practitioners, more notifications, a strong workforce focus and an eye on the future – these are some of the headlines from the 2024/25 annual report for Ahpra and the National Boards.
The number of registered medical practitioners in Australia increased by 3.9 per cent to 148,185 in the 2024/2025 year. There were 9,072 first-time registrants, more male than female doctors and more notifications – 12,744 notifications made about 9,087 medical practitioners Australia-wide, up from 11,207 notifications the year before.
In October 2024, we opened the new Expedited Specialist pathway – a fast-track to registration for highly qualified specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs) from similar health systems. The pathway is only open to SIMGs with a qualification listed on our list of accepted qualifications. This is a relatively short list and every qualification on it has been thoroughly assessed by the Australian Medical Council, and approved by the Board, as being substantially equivalent or based on similar competencies to the corresponding Australian specialist qualification.
In the booming cosmetic industry, improving patient safety in cosmetic surgery and procedures remained a Board priority. All cosmetic practice-related notifications are now handled by a national committee of Board members and an Ahpra team audits cosmetic surgery advertising and acts on non-compliance.
We published advance copies of new Guidelines for advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures for all health practitioners, including medical practitioners. New practice guidelines that bring more safeguards for patients seeking non-surgical cosmetic procedures by aligning standards across professions will apply to all non-medical health practitioners. Guidelines have been in place for medical practitioners since 2023.
Recognising that AI technology is rapidly being integrated into many areas of healthcare, Ahpra and the National Boards (including the Medical Board) issued guidance explaining how existing responsibilities in Board codes of conduct apply when practitioners use AI in their practice.
Matching regulatory guidance to emerging health care trends, the Board developed new guidance on medicinal cannabis prescribing and the compassionate release of superannuation for medical treatments.
Read more on the Medical Board’s annual report webpage and go to the Ahpra annual report webpage for more on regulatory work across the National Scheme.
People who make a complaint about a health practitioner are protected from reprisals or retaliation under increases to consumer protections (in effect from 1 December 2025).
People who make a complaint in good faith are already protected from liability for information they provide to Ahpra and the National Boards. The changes extend this protection, making it an offence for someone to threaten, intimidate or otherwise retaliate against a notifier for making a complaint.
The maximum penalty will be $60,000 for an individual or $120,000 for a body corporate.
It is now also illegal to enter into a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with a patient, unless it clearly states in writing that it does not limit a person from making a notification or providing assistance to regulators. Any NDAs that seek to limit a person’s ability to make a complaint will be invalid.
The consumer protection changes are part of a series of amendments to the National Law coming into effect over the coming months.
Information on the changes, how they will be implemented and what they mean for practitioners and the public is available in the full information guide.
Guides are available on the National Law amendments page on the Ahpra website, which includes links to related topics and will be updated as our implementation activities progress.
Changes to the way sexual misconduct is reported on the public Register of practitioners are coming in early 2026.
Practitioners who have a tribunal finding of professional misconduct involving sexual misconduct will have this information permanently published on the Register of practitioners. This change is retrospective and will apply to tribunal findings from 2010, when the National Scheme started.
The information recorded on the register will include a statement that:
Health ministers decided on this change to protect public safety and ensure people can make an informed decision when choosing a health practitioner.
Ahpra and the National Boards are finalising guidance on sexual misconduct and the National Law after extensive consultation and will release this guidance as soon as possible. A new guide to the suite of National Law changes includes more detail on the sexual misconduct changes.
We recognise that this change in the law will be distressing for some practitioners. If Ahpra contacts you about additional information being added to your register entry, we encourage you to contact your insurer, professional association or legal adviser for guidance and support. We publish information on general and profession specific support services on the Ahpra website.
The Medical Board of Australia and Ahpra can be contacted by phone on 1300 419 495.
For more information, see the Medical Board of Australia website and the Ahpra website.
Lodge an enquiry form through the website under Contact us at the bottom of every web page.
Mail correspondence can be addressed to: Dr Susan O'Dwyer, Chair, Medical Board of Australia, GPO Box 9958, Melbourne, VIC 3001.
Please note: Practitioners are responsible for keeping up to date with the Board’s expectations about their professional obligations. The Board publishes standards, codes and guidelines as well as alerts in its newsletter. If you unsubscribe from this newsletter you are still required to keep up to date with information published on the Board’s website.
Comments on the Board newsletter are welcome, send your feedback and suggestions to [email protected].
For registration enquiries or contact detail changes, call the Ahpra customer service team on 1300 419 495 (from within Australia).
