Abstract
Anticipating the looming crisis in access to dental services in rural and remote areas, the Western Australian Centre for Rural and Remote Oral Health developed an undergraduate rural placement program to provide dental students of The University of Western Australia opportunities for direct experience of rural and remote practice during the final year of the undergraduate curriculum. The Rural, Remote and Indigenous Placement program started in 2002 and, to the end of 2005, had placed 78 final year dental students in supervised clinical practice in rural, remote or Indigenous practice. In this study, the evolution of the program (2002-2005) is described and student evaluation of the program is reported. While involved in the rural placement program, students were assessed by experienced dental practitioners and provided program evaluation. This structured feedback allowed continuous improvement of the program. Data from each year's graduates was also analysed to examine the question of influence of placements on practice location during the first 6 months after graduation. Although it will be many years before the effects of outplacement programs can be specifically attained, the evidence to date indicates that the program may be a valuable tool among the plethora of strategies being investigated to augment Australia's rural oral health workforce.
Highlights
Australia is facing a significant dental workforce shortage
Dental education in Australia and throughout the world is going through a period of significant change, some of which is targeted at addressing the workforce issues[2,3,4,5,6,7]
The RRIP program is part of a comprehensive strategy to address the current shortage of rural dental practitioners[8], and similar outplacement models have been established in medicine and allied health curricula[9,10,11]
Summary
Australia is facing a significant dental workforce shortage. It has been estimated that by 2010, Australia will be approximately 1000 dental professionals short of workforce requirements[1]. The reasons students indicated for practising in a rural area when they graduated included: many job opportunities and experience; friendly patient base; and the facilities and earning capacity exceeded expectations (Table 5). Reason Friendly patient base Facilities and earning capacity exceeded expectations Enjoyed time in rural setting Lifestyle Community spirit & ‘part of the community’ Job opportunities and experience high Rural areas need dental services Greater variety of dentistry Only for a short term experience. All those contacted were informed that the single question about location of practice (within the first year after graduation) was for research purposes. Rural and remote was defined as being outside the Perth metropolitan area (ie rural and remote RRMA zones with populations ranging from less than 5000 to less than 100 000)[15]
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