"A nasty bump": lessons from refugee doctors' defiance of discrimination, 1937-1950

Prominent members of the Australian medical profession sought to prevent European doctors who immigrated to Australia in the late 1930s and 1940s from practising medicine. This article explores how these so-called "refugee doctors" contested the major strategies used by Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland statutory medical boards, influenced by the British Medical Association - Australian doctors' peak body - to impede their medical practice. In Australia's eastern States, refugee doctors challenged refusals to grant them registration to practise medicine, appealed decisions to deregister them, and practised medicine while unregistered. The article also considers lessons we might learn from this history, including the importance of reducing the potential for international medical graduates to whom Australia grants refuge to experience unfair obstacles both to practising their profession and challenging discrimination against them. Equally important is to remove temptations for them to practise medicine without registration and lower the risk of them doing so.