← all questions · Part-time and parenting
Every college permits it; the difference is how low they go and how easily a roster absorbs it. RACP allows down to 0.2 FTE 1; RANZCP, ANZCA, ACEM and RACS all floor at 0.5 2345. Shift-based and clinic-based work fractions cleanly. Procedural training with on-call and logbook volume does not.
The published floors. RACP is the most permissive on paper: part-time is anything under 1.0 FTE and applications are considered down to 0.2 FTE, with assessments pro-rated 1. RANZCP accredits 0.5 to 0.9 FTE and treats anything below 0.5 as exceptional, requiring Committee for Training approval; part-time trainees still get a minimum of three pro-rata supervision hours a week 2. ANZCA requires at least 0.5 FTE and that you contribute to both elective and acute work 3. ACEM will not certify a placement under 0.5 FTE 4. RACS sets 50%, only after 12 months of satisfactory training, approved one year at a time, and the whole program must still finish within nine years 5.
Floors are not the same as feasibility. What actually determines whether a fraction works is the shape of the work. Shift-based rosters — emergency, anaesthesia, psychiatry — divide cleanly and are the specialties the sub names first. Clinic-heavy physician advanced training divides well too. Training that depends on continuity, on-call and operative volume is where a 0.5 FTE trainee quietly falls behind, and where a college will ask why the fraction is necessary 56.
The known friction points, from people doing it. In psychiatry the mandatory Stage 2 terms — child and adolescent, consultation-liaison — are the hard ones to secure at reduced FTE even though the policy allows it. In anaesthesia the fraction has to be applied for well in advance so the rotation, including rural terms, can be built around it. In surgery, part-time is approved for a reason, and lifestyle alone is reported as a weak one.
The honest summary: no Australian college bans it, several make it awkward, and the binding constraint in every account is the department's roster rather than the college's regulation.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Hospitals while required to consider part-time still seem hostile. This goes down to specific departments and individual consultants and even colleague registrars.
Very do-able in ED, almost routine the more senior you get in training
Allowed in Anaesthesia. Minimum 0.5 FTE, must be applied for in advance to allow suitable placement
Doing part time training to get work life balance is not a great reason to be approved.
The minimum time RANZCP will accredit is 0.5 FTE. Most terms would be okay to do in this format. The challenging ones are the mandatory stage 2 terms (C&A, CL) which whilst theoretically can be done at 0.5, are usually tricky to secure at reduced FTE.
Asked 12 times 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 r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /part.?time.{0,40}(specialt|training|support)|(specialt|training).{0,35}part.?time/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments that name a specific college's rule or a specific obstacle, chosen so a named easy case, a named hard case and the general warning about department-level hostility all appear.