BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1582793
This article is part of the Research TopicDistributed Training and Rural Health Professions EducationView all 8 articles
brief research report
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Medicine, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
- 2Rural Community Clinical School, School of Medicine, Deakin University, Colac, Australia
- 3Deakin Rural Health, School of Medicine, Deakin University, Warrnambool, Australia
- 4Rural Clinical School, The University of Queensland, Rockhampton, Australia
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IntroductionTo address the maldistribution of medical practitioners within Deakin University’s rural training footprint, a place-based Rural Training Stream (RTS) was established (2022). Formal definition of the footprint has enabled priority admission of 30 local students annually. This paper describes graduate workforce outcomes for the footprint, providing a baseline for future evaluation of the RTS. MethodsGraduates’ (2011-2022) Principal Places of Practice (2023) were extracted from the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency register and linked with demographic, admission and training data. Descriptive statistics, univariate analysis and multinomial logistic regression were employed to describe associations with practice in its three defined rural Tiers (Tier 1: Deakin’s rural footprint, Tier 2: other rural Victoria, Tier 3: other rural Australia), with metropolitan practice as the reference group. Results120 (39.2%) graduates were working in Tier 1 and 93 (30.4%) in each of Tiers 2 and 3. Significant associations (p<0.001) with working in the footprint were: post-graduate years 1-3 (OR 7.2), rural longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) and rural clinical school (RCS) pathway (OR 6.8); RCS pathway only (OR 4.1), General Practice specialty (OR 4.7) and rural background (OR 3.02).DiscussionThe differential effect of rural training on graduates working in the rural footprint, compared with other parts of rural Victoria and Australia is noteworthy. Attrition of graduates from the footprint beyond post-graduate year three highlights the urgency of expanding rural specialty training pathways. These baseline data reinforce the place-based design of the RTS and provide a foundation for future evaluation of local workforce outcomes.
Keywords: rural medical education, rural footprint, Place-based, Program Evaluation, Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship, rural clinical school, Rural workforce
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fuller, BEATTIE, Versace, Rogers and McGrail. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lara Fuller, School of Medicine, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
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