{"id":853164,"date":"2026-08-13T00:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T00:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853164\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T00:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T00:30:18","slug":"alicia-commutes-five-hours-to-prac-every-day-its-either-that-or-drop-out-of-med-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853164\/","title":{"rendered":"Alicia commutes five hours to prac every day. It\u2019s either that or drop out of med school"},"content":{"rendered":"

Final-year medical student Alicia Watson drives more than two and a half hours each way – five hours in total – from her parents\u2019 home in the NSW Hunter to Liverpool Hospital, where she\u2019s on an unpaid prac placement.<\/p>\n

She leaves before sunrise and when she finally gets home, close to 7pm, she studies for her major exam which is coming up in six weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Alicia<\/p>\n

Alicia Watson is a final year medical student, currently on placement at Liverpool Hospital. She commutes from Lochinvar in the Hunter Valley because she cannot afford to live closer.\u00a0Alicia Watson<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s pretty much it… I don\u2019t really have time for much else unfortunately,\u201d Watson told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

Other than sleeping in her car in the hospital car park, which she has considered, the gruelling and expensive commute is the only way Watson can survive the final year of her medical degree, which includes months of mandatory unpaid prac at hospitals across her region.<\/p>\n

This year she\u2019ll do seven five-week placements with a minimum expectation of 35 hours per week that can often be even longer, depending on the rotation – entirely unpaid.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople assume that medical students are going to be people that come from money, and therefore don\u2019t need (financial support) but you know, the reason that stereotype exists is because people with money are the only people who can afford to get through medicine,\u201d Watson said.<\/p>\n

Across the three years of her degree, Watson was able to rent with friends in western Sydney, working all kinds of jobs from a COVID testing clinic to St John\u2019s Ambulance, and as a technical assistant in an emergency department pilot program.<\/p>\n

She was also a food delivery driver for a while and picked up Christmas casual work in retail and hospitality, but in her final years of study, the added burden of prac meant there was simply not enough hours left in the day for additional paid work and she was faced with moving home to Lochinvar or dropping out entirely.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s tried applying for jobs, she\u2019s been passed up by applicants with more flexible schedules who can work more hours.<\/p>\n

She said she\u2019s watched many \u201cnon-traditional students\u201d without family support either fail or drop out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many have left the degree or failed academically and had to repeat years… people that were couch-surfing, people who were considering living out of their car, they just weren\u2019t meeting academic requirements not because they couldn\u2019t, they were absolutely more than capable, but because those barriers were there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Liverpool<\/p>\n

Liverpool Hospital, where Alicia Watson is currently on placement and says she has considered sleeping in her car.\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n

Watson plans to complete her medical internship at her local hospital in Maitland and is passionate about improving healthcare in rural and regional areas, having watched her father be forced to travel to Sydney for treatment for cancer.<\/p>\n

She believes expanding the Commonwealth Prac Payment to medical students would help diversify the medical workforce and make it accessible for people who aren\u2019t from wealthy or medical families.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard at the moment for me to encourage people who are from those non-traditional backgrounds to pursue medicine, just because I know how hard it\u2019s going to be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Unpaid prac requirements a barrier to rural and low-income students<\/p>\n

The federal government recently announced that from the middle of next year, the means-tested Commonwealth Prac Payment, which already applies to teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work, will be expanded into allied health degrees<\/a> including\u00a0clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, pharmacy, paramedicine, radiography, rehabilitation therapies, audiology and podiatry.<\/p>\n

But medical students are still not included.<\/p>\n

The president of the Australian Medical Students Association (AMSA), Seniru Mudannayake, told nine.com.au the students most in need of financial support could become the doctors Australia needs.<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

Australian Medical Students Association President Seniru Mudannayake believes expanding Commonwealth Prac Payment to medical students would allow more students from rural, low-income and First Nations communities to study medicine.\u00a0Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cThe medical workforce shortage is really most serious in rural, low-income, and First Nations communities and yet this government, in not supporting students from those communities, is keeping medicine accessible only to inner-metropolitan and affluent students, and then sort of complaining when they don\u2019t move into the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that the sort of students who do end up going back to their communities to work are exactly these kind of students who are struggling so much… exactly the students that we\u2019re letting down when we tell them that you have to do two or three years of placement full-time without a cent in prac support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of students actually had the perception that this was a government for young people, and a lot of us to some extent had actually looked up to the prime minister in the sense that he was someone from a working-class community like many of us, and to see someone from that sort of community be able to achieve so much kind of gave us all the sense that we could too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis sort of decision really does feel like a betrayal of those communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just don\u2019t understand why medicine was excluded, and why this government\u2019s made a choice that Australians from low-income, First Nations, and rural backgrounds don\u2019t deserve as much a chance at being a doctor as their more wealthy peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australian Medical Association president Dr Danielle McMullen also questioned why medical students are still being excluded from paid prac and has urged the government to reconsider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncluding medical students would improve community access to healthcare, particularly in underserviced rural and remote communities,\u201d McMullen said.<\/p>\n

\"AMA<\/p>\n

AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen has questioned why medical students are still excluded from Commonwealth Prac Payment.\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n

\u201cMedical students are required to undertake about\u00a02000\u00a0hours of unpaid clinical placements.\u202f<\/p>\n

\u201cThe costs associated with this unpaid placement are a significant barrier to participation among current and potential students from low socio-economic and rural backgrounds.\u202f\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvidence also tells us that medical students from rural and regional Australia are more likely to practice in a rural and regional area once qualified. <\/p>\n

\u201cHelping these students undertake their placements will mean more doctors in areas that struggle the most with access.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

Education Minister Jason Clare did not respond directly to questions concerning the relationship between unpaid prac requirements and medical workforce shortages in rural and regional communities.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Clare said paid prac was a \u201cgame changer providing real cost of living help\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time an Australian government has provided financial support for mandatory placements,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve started with nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s working.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now expanding it to 10 areas for students training to be front line health workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the next logical step.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are areas where there are big skills shortages and where we expect there will be more shortages in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision is about getting more people training to be on the front line of our health system and to start and finish their degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late last Monday night the government also announced it would be funding an additional 50 medical Commonwealth Supported Places (CSP) spread across eight universities across the country beginning in 2028.<\/p>\n

A student who studies on a CSP has their tuition subsidised by the government but still does not receive any payment or financial support during their prac placements.<\/p>\n

Mudannayake said he was sceptical of announcements for additional placements for medical students.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time the government announces more medical student spots, AMSA looks at that with real cynicism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, if you don\u2019t actually provide the financial supports for students from underrepresented backgrounds to do medicine, those communities will remain underserved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Final-year medical student Alicia Watson drives more than two and a half hours each way – five hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-853164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}