A CRITICAL future shortage of doctors is being exacerbated by a lack of internship positions.

This is potentially driving an influx of overseas-trained doctors as international students return home or decide not to come here in the first place, the Australian Medical Association has said.

Today AMA president Andrew Pesce will tell a crisis summit on the national internship shortage that "significant numbers of international medical students will not be able to gain intern positions next year".

Following an agreement between state and federal health ministers in February, only domestic, commonwealth-supported students will be guaranteed intern positions at the end of their university training. Potentially, domestic fee-paying students at Australia's two private universities - Bond and Notre Dame - also could be at risk, along with all international students, who make up 17 per cent of Australia's 14,500 medical students.

In March the government doubled the number of general practitioner training places from 600 to 1200 by 2014, but they are still in short supply.

Among those concerned about not finding an intern position is third-year medical student and University of Queensland Medical Society spokesman Jonathon Da Silva.

"There are all these overseas students coming down the pipeline. Instead the Australian government is pulling in overseas-trained doctors who need extra training, accreditation and supervision," Mr Da Silva said.

The AMA summit comes as the Medical Deans of Australia and New Zealand warned Australia faced a widespread doctor shortage during the next 15 years.

The country's 16 medical schools will produce 2626 medical graduates this year, including 417 overseas students.

But the existing shortage of clinical places and trainers will be exacerbated by a flood of doctors that will see graduate numbers double inside a decade. Jim Angus, president of the MDANZ, has previously said more than 3100 medical students will graduate from Australian universities in 2014.

"We will be massively short of doctors but we have these roadblocks such as a lack of internships for overseas students," he said.

Seventy per cent of international medical students have indicated they wish to continue working in Australia after becoming fully qualified.

Medical professions make up nine of 53 occupations on the government's critical skills list, but the internship shortage has the potential to make Australian-qualified doctors in critically short supply, while the country continues to import doctors from overseas, who need about two years to be retrained.

Professor Angus said the states' underlying funding model for intern training - and medical schools' own business models - had left them vulnerable to any downturn in overseas student numbers.

"Over the past 10 years medical schools have gone into educating overseas students, often charging north of $200,000 for a course," he said.

But about 50 per cent of the fee went to cross-subsidise commonwealth-supported students, he said.

"If Australia denies overseas students intern places, they'll dry up and our quality will go down because we won't have the funds to support the medical schools," he said.

Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association executive director Prue Power said tens of millions of dollars in extra funding were needed to meet rising intern demand, and private hospitals and practices should help shoulder the training load.