Short Communication

Pre-graduating medical students' interest in rural internship

AUTHORS

name here
Andrew Szabo
1 MD, Intern

name here
Sam Curtin
2 MBBS

name here
Lee Anne Gray
3 MBBS

name here
David Paul
4 MBBS, PhD, Professor, Associate Dean

name here
Denese Playford
5 PhD, Associate Professor *

CORRESPONDENCE

*A/Prof Denese Playford

AFFILIATIONS

1, 2 The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

3, 4 The University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, WA 6959, Australia

5 The Rural Clinical School of Western Australia and The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

PUBLISHED

28 August 2018 Volume 18 Issue 3

HISTORY

RECEIVED: 10 May 2017

REVISED: 6 February 2018

ACCEPTED: 23 February 2018

CITATION

Szabo A, Curtin S, Gray L, Paul D, Playford D.  Pre-graduating medical students' interest in rural internship. Rural and Remote Health 2018; 18: 4456. https://doi.org/10.22605/RRH4456

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSgo to url

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence


full article:

Introduction

There is growing evidence that medical students who have had undergraduate rural experiences will enter rural medical practice at higher rates than those not participating1,2. Some medical students may also enter medical school with pre-existing interest in a rural career3: students entering medical school from a rural background are likely to continue this rural trajectory4. However, Playford et al (2016) have shown that a substantial proportion of students expected to be on a rural trajectory will have no rural experience after graduating5. It is not known whether this is due to lack of interest or lack of opportunity.

Given the new Commonwealth and state interest in encouraging rural training pathways after graduation, it is important to gauge pre-graduate’s level of interest in rural options. The first step in the pathway is rural internships. Therefore the present study asked pre-graduating medical students about their levels of interest in a rural internship, given that 2016 was the first year when 10 full rural internships were offered in Western Australia, in addition to the 108 single 10-week-term rural intern rotations.

Method

All penultimate and final-year medical students at both Notre Dame University and the University of Western Australia were invited to participate via a secure survey link circulated using Facebook and rural club contacts in May–June 2016.

Information was requested about factors known to be associated with rural work: rural background (years spent rurally), rural clinical school (RCS) participation, rural health club membership and pre-existing intention to work rurally. The survey then asked students to rate their likelihood, on a five-point Likert scale, of applying for a full-year rural internship in a Western Australia Country Health Service (WACHS) hospital or for an urban internship based on the rural internship rotations the urban hospital offered.

Ethics approval

Ethics approval was granted by both universities (016122F and RA/4/1/8369).

Results

A total of 140 medical students responded to the survey, representing both universities and all invited years, with response rates of 19–23% per year group. Not all respondents completed all questions. Students with a rural background of 5 years or more (50/140, 36%), those with RCS experience (65/140, 46%) and those associated with SPINRPHEX, a national rural student health network (84/140, 60%), were disproportionately represented in the sample.

All remaining survey items were affirmatively answered: 112 of 140 (80%) intended to work rurally after their postgraduate training, 70 of 140 (50%) came into medical school with this intention and 98 of 140 (70%) had been influenced by their medical school experiences.

With respect to intern work (Table 1), 59 of 140 (42%) were likely/very likely to consider a full rural internship with WACHS whilst 59 respondents (42%) were unlikely/very unlikely to apply for these same positions. A total of 100 of 138 (72% were likely/very likely to consider an urban internship based on its rural rotations. An overlap of 47 students were likely/very likely to consider both options.

Logistic regression showed that, after controlling for all other factors, the remaining independent predictors of intending to choose a full-time rural internship were pre-existing interest on entering medical school (odds ratio (OR) 2.881, confidence interval (CI) 1.209,6.864 p=0.017) and intention to practise rurally as a consequence of medical school (OR 5.154, CI 1.929,13.771, p=0.001).

Table 1:  Likelihood of applying for internship for a full year in a Western Australian rural hospital or to a metropolitan hospital based upon rural rotations offered

Conclusion

There is considerable rural interest in a subset of Western Australian medical students who already have high rates of rural experience in terms of background, club membership and RCS participation. They are clearly interested in long-term rural work, of which full-year rural internship may play a part. Identifying these students with rural intentions in medical school may assist in the allocation planning process.

references:

1 Playford D, Evans S, Atkinson D, Auret K, Riley, G. Impact of the rural clinical school of Western Australia on work location of medical graduates. Medical Journal of Australia 2014; 200: 104-107. DOI link, PMid:24484114
2 Kondalsamy-Chennakesavan S, Eley DS, Ranmuthugala G, Chater AB, Toombs M, Darshan D, et al. Determinants of rural practice: positive interaction between rural background and rural undergraduate traini. Medical Journal of Australia 2015; 202: 41-45. DOI link, PMid:25588445
3 Walker JH, DeWitt DE, Pallant JF, Cunningham CE. Rural origin plus a rural clinical school placement is a significant predictor of medical students' intentions to practice rurally: a multi-university study. Rural and Remote Health 2012; 19: 1908. Available: web link (Accessed 10 May 2017).
4 Jones M, Humphreys JA, Prideaux D. Predicting medical students' intentions to take up rural practice after graduation. Medical Education 2009; 43: 1001-1009. DOI link, PMid:19769650
5 Playford D, Ng W, Burkitt T. Creation of a mobile rural workforce following undergraduate longitudinal rural immersion. Medical Teacher 2016; (38): 498-503. DOI link, PMid:26204255

You might also be interested in:

2022 - ‘Most nurses in the rural or remote health clinics run away from their job due to no remote allowances and poor working equipment and environment'. Health professional leaders’ perception of shortages in the nursing workforce in underserved areas in Vanuatu

2013 - Birthing in the Barkly: births to Barkly women in 2010

2012 - Depression in rural adolescents: relationships with gender and availability of mental health services

This PDF has been produced for your convenience. Always refer to the live site https://www.rrh.org.au/journal/article/4456 for the Version of Record.