Central West Health is working to develop a groundbreaking rural health workforce model to encourage more rural residents to embark on a health career and make the bush their home.
“We all know the difficulties experienced in rural regions in attracting and retaining staff, whether clinical or non-clinical,’’ Central West Hospital and Health Service Executive Director of Medical Services Dr David Walker said.
“Whether its doctors, nurses, midwives, or any other health care professional or administrators, or non-clinical hospital support staff, one thing is abundantly clear,’’ he said.
“If we can encourage more rural or regional residents to pursue a career in health and provide them with opportunities for student placements in rural areas, they are far more likely to return there to work once they have further developed their skills and knowledge.
“We know it works.
“There have been academic studies done that show the positive interaction between having a rural background and rural undergraduate training.
“Essentially, the studies show that students with a rural background who undertake rural clinical placements are for more likely to return to work in a rural area when compared with metropolitan students undertaking similar rural placements.
“Here within my own Central West medical workforce, for instance, we have many doctors with a rural or regional background who have chosen to pursue a career in the bush after completing their studies.
“But while students with a rural background, who have enjoyed a rural clinical placement are more likely to return to work rurally, we can’t ignore the non-rural cohort of students.
“We also have here in the Central West doctors, as well as many other clinical staff, with a nonrural background who have chosen to develop their careers in a rural environment because of the positive rural clinical placements they experienced as students.
“Indeed, roughly half of our current medical workforce spent some periods of time here in the Central West on student clinical placements.’’
Dr Walker said due to its workforce challenges servicing an enormous area with small,
dispersed communities, Central West Health had developed some unique strengths in medical recruitment that could be extended across the entire workforce spectrum.
For the medical workforce, these factors included:
- a maturing, increasingly stable medical workforce model across primary care and
- hospital services
- established vertically integrated supervision
- demonstrated ability to recruit and retain rural generalists
- strong sense of community connectedness
- a culture of innovation and adaptability
- existing partnerships with universities and training providers
- experience supporting multidisciplinary learners in remote practice contexts.
“Thanks to the experience we have built in developing our rural medical workforce and given the growing demands for health workers across the state, I believe there is a timely opportunity to position Central West as a recognised leader in innovative rural workforce development,’’ Dr Walker said.
“I believe the Central West can use the strengths we’ve built to develop its own identity as a recognised rural training and workforce development environment in its own right, rather than functioning as a peripheral ‘spoke’ of larger regional centres.
“We are still in the very early days of developing this concept but ultimately, we want to move beyond fragmented, profession-specific approaches toward a coordinated rural workforce development model.
“That’s why, here in the Central West, we offer local high school and TAFE students the opportunities to experience working in a clinical environment.
“And that’s why we are keen to offer students undertaking tertiary courses as future doctors, nurses, midwives, allied health practitioners or other clinical pathways the opportunity to undertake as many of their placements within our region as possible.
“Going forward we plan to develop even stronger partnerships with local schools, with universities and TAFE colleges, with non-government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health organisations and with the State and Commonwealth governments.’’