← all questions · The unaccredited years
There is a permanent job for it, and it is not called unaccredited registrar. NSW defines a Career Medical Officer as a non-specialist in a permanent, non-training position under its own award 1; Queensland's CMO grade requires at least six years postgraduate experience and is non-rotational 2. The unaccredited reg job itself is annual and re-contested every year.
The grades are defined, and they are different things. NSW calls a PGY4-plus doctor not in a program a "Trainee — Unaccredited Position", paid at registrar award classification, and separately defines a Career Medical Officer as a non-specialist appointed to a permanent, non-training position under the Public Hospital Career Medical Officers (State) Award 1. Queensland's structure is the same shape: PHO is the non-accredited registrar grade, usually from the fourth postgraduate year, while CMO requires at least six years postgraduate experience and is non-rotational 2. So yes — there is a lifelong non-specialist career structure, with an award, and it is the CMO grade, not the unaccredited registrar grade.
What that costs you. No fellowship, so no specialist billing and no consultant appointment; and the unaccredited registrar post itself is advertised annually in the same state campaigns everyone else applies to, so the job is re-contested every year 3.
The scale. The 2024 Medical Training Survey puts unaccredited and other non-specialist trainees at roughly half the training cohort 4 — this is not a rare corner of the workforce.
What the sub says. That it is possible, that NSW currently cannot fill positions and is recruiting from overseas, and that long-term CMOs in ED, psychiatry and medicine work close to consultant level, often part-time, without the admin and on-call 5.
The counter-argument, and it is the top comment. Hospitals lose interest once they can no longer dangle the training program as leverage, so the unaccredited door narrows with age even though the CMO door stays open 5. The advice that follows it is to leave the public system for locums, private assisting or a private CMO contract rather than wait to be aged out 5.
Nobody publishes how many doctors stay non-specialist for a career — not published.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Hospitals may be less interested in hiring you in the long run if they realise they can't keep dangling the chance of getting on the program as leverage to exploit you however.
Yes you can remain an unaccredited surg reg indefinitely. Currently in nsw they cannot fill positions and are recruiting directly from overseas.
I would not hang around the public system and end up getting exploited.
From my experience working with long-term CMOs in psych and med and ED, they work almost at the level of a consultant but not quite, they're fairly independent, and respected, and don't have all the admin/teaching/supervision/management/on-call tasks of a specialist.
Asked 1 time on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in the r/ausjdocs dump (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(stay|remain|staying|career|permanent|forever|entire career).{0,50}(unaccredited|service reg|\bCMO\b|PHO)|(unaccredited|\bCMO\b|career medical officer).{0,45}(forever|entire career|permanent|life|long term|career)/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments in the single matching thread, chosen so the 'yes, indefinitely' and 'you will be aged out' answers sit together.