The medical workforce in 2025: what's in the numbers?

Key trends in Australian medical workforce supply include increasing overall supply levels and an increasing number of medical graduates, but also reduced workforce effort and a large cohort of doctors approaching traditional retirement age. Although prevocational and vocational training programs are beginning to expand, there are significant bottlenecks in the postgraduate training pathway for the sizeable cohorts of new graduates. The primary health care workforce needs continued development, including team-based approaches to care and increased use of technology. Increasing our understanding of system-level and individual-level determinants of doctors' choices and implementing innovative strategies to accommodate the increasingly diverse work patterns of doctors are critical to ensuring that in future there are sufficient doctors, with the right skills, in the right places.