Medical students' reported barriers to training at a Rural Clinical School.

OBJECTIVE: To understand and address students' concerns about attending one of the new Commonwealth-funded Rural Clinical Schools. DESIGN: Analysis of students' reported reasons for clinical school selection from 2003 to 2004. SETTING: The School of Medicine and the Rural Clinical School, University of Melbourne. PARTICIPANTS: Data were obtained from de-identified preference documents submitted by the medical student cohort assigned to the University of Melbourne clinical schools to begin in July, 2004. RESULTS: Thirteen categories of student concerns (social) were identified from written student preference documents. CONCLUSIONS: Evaluation of the students' concerns about social dislocation if they were assigned to a rural clinical school has provided important information about perceived barriers to rural training. These issues must be systematically addressed at the school, university and community level.

Removing the roadblocks to medical and health student training in rural hospitals in Victoria.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the extent of undergraduate health student placements in regional hospitals in northern Victoria in 1999, prior to substantial changes in rural undergraduate medical education in Australia. METHOD: Cross sectional postal survey with telephone follow-up in north-east Victoria. Subjects were all 17 regional and rural hospitals involved in health student teaching in North-east Victoria. Main outcome measures were the numbers, duration and discipline of health students placements and reported barriers to such placements. RESULTS: Large regional hospitals accounted for two-thirds of all undergraduate health student placements. Smaller sites placed few allied health students. Barriers to a larger, more sustainable system of rural placements and rotations included accommodation shortages and funding constraints, particularly in smaller rural hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Adequate resourcing of placements of a meaningful duration, stronger institutional support, and improved resourcing of regional accommodation is required to facilitate a larger, more systematic and sustainable system of medical and health student placements in rural areas.