Does undertaking rural placements add to place of origin as a predictor of where health graduates work?

Skinner, Timothy C., Semmens, Libby, Versace, Vincent, Bish, Melanie, and Skinner, Isabelle K. (2022) Does undertaking rural placements add to place of origin as a predictor of where health graduates work? Australian Journal of Rural Health, 30 (4). pp. 529-535.

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Abstract

Objective: To determine the work location (metropolitan, regional, rural and remote) of graduates in nursing, allied health and oral health disciplines who complete their professional training, end-to-end training, in a regional or rural area noting the potential inclusion of a metropolitan-based placement for speciality practice not available in rural or regional Victoria.

Methods: We tracked the place of employment from the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA) of all graduates from a regional/rural tertiary education provider. The student home address at enrolment, locations where they undertook all placements and their current place of work were described using an objective geographical model of access, the Modified Monash Model.

Results: Seventy-five per cent of 5506 graduates were located in the AHPRA database. About one third of graduates were working in metropolitan areas, 1/3 in regional cities and 1/3 in rural areas. Students' origin accounted for 1/3 of variance in current workplace location. The more placement days students completed in regional/ rural areas was also a significant predictor of working in a regional or rural area.

Conclusion: End-to-end training in regional/rural areas is an effective approach to retaining a regional/rural workforce. Student origin is a strong predictor of working rural or regionally, as is undertaking placements in rural areas. This suggests that priority for rural/ regional student placements should be given to students in end-to-end regional/ rural programs and students from a regional/ rural background.

Item ID: 74723
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1440-1584
Keywords: education, rural and remote education, Rural health, student placements, workforce
Copyright Information: © 2022 The Authors. Australian Journal of Rural Health published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of National Rural Health Alliance Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited: 29 Nov 2022 04:50
FoR Codes: 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320224 Rural clinical health @ 50%
42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420321 Rural and remote health services @ 50%
SEO Codes: 20 HEALTH > 2002 Evaluation of health and support services > 200205 Health policy evaluation @ 100%
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