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09 Dec 2025
Medical trainees can make more informed decisions about their options while stakeholders work to improve the training experience, using the 2025 Medical Training Survey (MTS) results released today.
The MTS, an initiative of the Medical Board of Australia, is a longitudinal survey that tracks the quality of medical training. Now in its seventh year, the MTS provides unprecedented insight into the training experience -- both positive and negative.
According to the 2025 results, trainees rate the quality of their medical training very highly, with 89 per cent rating the quality of their clinical supervision, and 86 per cent rating the quality of their teaching and education sessions, as good/excellent.
There have also been improvements in clinical supervision, orientation, teaching and education, with 83 per cent of trainees recommending their training position and workplace as a place to train.
Despite these positive signs, there are still elements of the training experience that have proved resistant to change, as well as emerging new challenges for stakeholders to address.
Trainees continue to experience or witness unacceptable behaviour. Over time, they have become less likely to nominate senior medical staff as the source, and more likely to nominate patients and their families and carers. In 2025 both groups were cited by 46 per cent of trainees.
‘It seems the deficits in the culture of medicine reported by trainees are firmly anchored to wider community attitudes and behaviours,’ Medical Board of Australia Chair Dr Susan O’Dwyer said.
Unacceptably, the rate of bullying, discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment) and racism is unchanged at an average of 30 per cent. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainees the rate was nearly twice that (56 per cent), with 38 per cent reporting they experienced and/or witnessed racism.
‘Work across the profession and the health sector to improve cultural safety and address racism remains urgent and essential,’ Dr O’Dwyer said.
MTS results reveal a complex workplace environment, with variations in results between different groups of trainees. Interns and specialist non-GP trainees report having witnessed and/or experienced unacceptable behaviours nearly 20 per cent more often than IMGs and GP trainees.
The source of the unacceptable behaviour experienced and/or witnessed is also changing over time. There has been a 10 per centage point drop in senior medical staff being nominated as the source (56 per cent in 2020 to 46 per cent in 2025) at the same time as there has been a nearly 10 per cent rise in patients and/or patient families/carers being nominated as the source (38 per cent to 46 per cent).
The MTS is the only annual, national, profession-wide survey of all doctors in training in Australia and was created for trainees, with trainees. Stringent privacy controls make it safe and confidential for trainees to take part.
Trainees are using the MTS results to shape their choice of training sites and specialties, and health sector stakeholders are using the data to identify hot-spots, address issues and share strengths.
In 2025, more than 18,000 trainees did the MTS and more IMGs than ever before shared their perspectives.
MTS questions are refined each year to generate meaningful data that stakeholders can use more effectively to drive change. New insights in 2025 include:
The 2025 MTS results are published now as static reports on the MedicalTrainingSurvey.gov.au website. Current results will be accessible in searchable form in early 2026 in the MTS online data dashboard.
‘It seems the deficits in the culture of medicine reported by trainees are firmly anchored to wider community attitudes and behaviours’ – Medical Board of Australia Chair, Dr Susan O’Dwyer.
