International medical students seem likely to miss out on placements because of the placement shortage for graduate doctors, University of Otago Faculty of Medicine manager Bruce Smith says.
The health sector struggled to find places for this year's graduates, an unexpected shortage resolved this month when some health boards agreed to take more. The tight situation was caused by a combination of more graduates and lower turnover among doctors.
Dunedin School of Medicine had 31 international medical students and 217 domestic students completing their final year.
''That seems to be what the situation is at the moment [international students missing out], and this is the first year that's happened,'' Mr Smith said.
Only two of the international students were privately funded, as most were paid for by their governments, largely due to shortages of medical school places in their countries.
Although many of the publicly funded students went home for their postgraduate placements, some had stayed in New Zealand.
The New Zealand option was especially important for students whose governments were not funding them.
Mr Smith said New Zealand was lucky to have sufficient capacity to train its medical students, and no domestic students missed out because of the presence of international students.
New Zealand Medical Students' Association president Phillip Chao said yesterday medical students had not been impressed by the way the shortfall was handled.
Although domestic students were now assured places, there had been a couple of weeks of great uncertainty this month that should have been flagged earlier.
He said the situation was difficult for some international graduates, who in some cases had spent more than $300,000 to train and might not be able to gain a place in their home country.
Mr Chao said the short-fall problem should have been anticipated.
He acknowledged it was a complex issue because of the need to place domestic students.
A spokeswoman for Health Workforce NZ, executive chairman Prof Des Gorman, said he was overseas and could not respond.
Prof Gorman spoke at a medical conference in Dunedin earlier this month, when he said the domestic students were all placed because of the goodwill of DHBs.
An ''extraordinary'' drop in international medical jobs contributed to the shortfall, Prof Gorman said earlier this month.
