Experiencing a rural medical school

Rural student entry into a medical course: a South Australian rural high school perspective.

INTRODUCTION Rural background is an acknowledged predictor of later rural medical practice. This study aimed to explore why only small numbers of high school students from rural South Australia seek entry to the University of Adelaide Medical School. METHOD Questionnaires were designed to explore the interest in, knowledge of and attitudes about studying medicine of rural high school students...

Increasing the supply of women physicians in rural areas: outcomes of a medical school rural program.

BACKGROUND Women physicians are less likely then men to practice in rural areas. With women representing an increasing proportion of physicians, there is concern that this could exacerbate the rural physician shortage. The Physician Shortage Area Program (PSAP) of Jefferson Medical College (JMC) is one of a small number of medical school rural programs shown to be successful in addressing the r...

Are medical student results affected by allocation to different sites in a dispersed rural medical school?

INTRODUCTION As medical education becomes more decentralised, and greater use is made of rural clinical schools and other dispersed sites, attention is being paid to the quality of the learning experiences across these sites. This article explores this issue by analysing the performance data of 4 cohorts of students in a dispersed clinical school model across 4 sites. The study is set in a newl...

A 7-year-old boy experiencing difficulty at school.

The influence of rural clinical school experiences on medical students’ levels of interest in rural careers

BACKGROUND Australian Rural Clinical School (RCS) programmes have been designed to create experiences that positively influence graduates to choose rural medical careers. Rural career intent is a categorical evaluation measure and has been used to assess the Australian RCS model. Predictors for rural medical career intent have been associated with extrinsic values such as students with a rural ...