The university is accepting applications for its new Bachelor of Medical Science which, to avoid understating intent, has a sub-title, “pathway to medicine”

It’s a three-year degree with a maximum 40 students a year to feed into Uni Queensland’s four-year MD.

The programme is a JV between CQU, Uni Queensland, plus the Central Queensland and Wide Bay hospital and health services.

It demonstrates where patience and guile can get a regional university. Former CQU VC Scott Bowman scrubbed-up in 2018, when he and a Queensland Health exec briefed Rockhampton media on why the city was just the place for a medical school  – Uni Queensland already having a clinical training school there helps (CMM March 9, November 13 2018).

And successor Nick Klomp kept at it, two years later signing an MOU for a  medical programme in Bundaberg and Rockhampton by 2022, in the presence of then Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles (CMM March 22 2019).

And now it is starting to happen, at least in Rocky (Bundaberg now gets placements at its hospital).