Uncovering an invisible workforce

To the Editor: Hays notes that international medical graduates on temporary residency visas are “an almost invisible workforce”.1 This invisibility results partly from a lack of data, but it also stems from a lack of coordination and consistency between agencies which do hold relevant data. In the main, these doctors hold conditional registration (rather than general registration) with state and territory medical registration boards. However, there are inconsistencies between jurisdictions in how data on conditional registrants are treated in relation to national medical workforce data collection (namely the annual national medical labour force surveys overseen by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW]), and in how statistics relating to this group are reported.