Internship marks the transition from medical student to medical practitioner and in order to make this transition, interns must meet the postgraduate year 1 (PGY1) requirements. These requirements were introduced in January 2024 as part of the Australian Medical Council’s National Framework for Prevocational Medical Training (the Framework). The requirements are detailed in the following two documents:
PMCWA assesses WA health sites that employ PGY1s to ensure the programs and terms provided meet these requirements. PGY1’s must only be employed by health sites that are accredited by PMCWA. Below is a summary of these requirements:
- Program length: PGY1s must complete a minimum of 47 weeks full-time equivalent service (including professional development leave) over a maximum of 3 years
- Program structure: A PGY1’s clinical year must be made up of a minimum of 4 terms of at least 10 weeks with a maximum of 50% in any one specialty (eg medicine including its subspecialties, or surgery including its subspecialties) and a maximum of 25% in any one subspecialty.
- Program content – clinical experience: Across the clinical year, a PGY1 must be exposed to clinical care of patients in each of the following:
- Undifferentiated illness care
- Chronic illness care
- Acute and critical illness care
- Peri-operative/procedural care
- Clinical teams: PGY1s must be embedded in a clinical team for at least half of the clinical year
- Service terms – relief and nights: PGY1s are only allowed to undertake service terms for 20% or less of the year (refer to PMCWA Service Guidelines for further information about how these requirements work in WA)
- Satisfactory completion: PGY1s must achieve the prevocational outcomes at the end of their internship (refer to AMC’s Training and Assessment Requirements for further information).
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