The WA Rural Health Summit highlighted the eagerness of medical students to work in rural healthcare.
Students from urban backgrounds are showing a profound interest in working rurally, but that interest is not being met with proportionate funding and infrastructure, says the RACGP’s deputy regional director of training.
Panellists at the recent Rural Health Summit in Perth said there was diversity in the kinds of students showing an interest in working rurally.
“It was really apparent that there was definite appetite among them to go rural, but that the perceived lack of resources remains a barrier,” Dr Bree Wright told The Medical Republic.
This has been the primary hindrance to the pipeline strategy with many students not being able to have sufficient access to education and financial support while in rural placements.
“Their opinion is that there’s a lack of teachers, lack of schools, and thus supported rural placements, and it’s making it actually very competitive amongst the students to get a rural placement while they’re in med school,” said Dr Wright.
“Not as many medical students are getting that initial exposure to rural medicine during med school, and that’s not leading to them applying for rural placements once they’re in the workforce.”
Other rural health officials have said that students having access to supportive rural education was crucial to establishing a greater rural healthcare workforce.
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Notre Dame’s medical school in Broome received a lot of praise during the summit, with students citing how the school’s education model provided far more flexibility.
“Notre Dame’s new medical school in Broome is an absolute game changer, and the medical students are really hoping that more universities will follow this model,” Dr Wright said.
“All of our medical schools locally do have rural clinical school engagement so medical students can go and do a year rurally, but Notre Dame is the only medical school where you can go and do the entirety of your degree rurally.”
As for election demands, the requests of students align with what has been commonly stated by other rural bodies in that major investment into infrastructure is necessary for future sustainability.
In addition to this, there were calls during the summit for further investment to allow for more regional placements, with students citing the current highly competitive state of rural placement often being discourage.
“If we can resource this and get more of them rurally, then hopefully that will have a flow on effect to the workforce rurally,” Dr Wright told TMR.
“It certainly sounds like if there were more sort of opportunities available, we’d be able to get more of them there, which would be phenomenal.”
