Hosts needed for next medical program

The purpose of the program is to expose medical students based in Perth, to rural opportunities early on in their degree so that they are more likely to consider rural placements or training opportunities later on in their careers.

Two hundred medical students from The University of Notre Dame Australia and Curtin University will participate in the program, spending one week in the Wheatbelt.

During their stay, the students will visit local farms, industry, general practices, hospitals and schools and participate in community activities.

With 100 students participating from each university, Notre Dame students will visit Bruce Rock, Merredin, Narrogin, Southern Cross and Westonia, while Curtin University students will visit Cunderdin, Corrigin, Kellerberrin, Moora and Wongan Hills.

Curtin University students will be in the second year of their medical degree, while the Notre Dame students will only be in their eighth week of studying medicine.

The program has been running in its current format with both Curtin and Notre Dame students participating since 2018, however Notre Dame had run a smaller scale version of the program since 2008.

Rural Health West project co-ordinator Betony Dawson said the program had had successful results from previous cohorts, with many students going on to fill rural medical placements and training opportunities.

"One of the students that has been on the Wheatbelt trip is just about to start Rural Clinical School next year in Narrogin, purely because of their experience taking part in the Wheatbelt immersion program and there are various students that have also gone on to work at various regional hospitals, whether it's Bunbury, Albany etc," Ms Dawson said.

She said the immersion program had also worked both ways in that when medical students stayed on the family farms, some of the kids of those farming families had gone on to study subjects, including physiotherapy and medicine.

"Then we've had students who have kept in touch with their host families and gone out and stayed with them during their breaks," Ms Dawson said.

"If the students do get hosted in town, we organise for them to visit a farm during the immersion week, just to give them an experience of the scale of farming in the Wheatbelt, what equipment they're using and some exposure to the hazards of farming as well.

"We have had students that have never left metropolitan Perth before and it opens up their eyes.

"We had a participant who had never been past the airport, for example, so it is great to give them that experience and have them come back just amazed by what it's like to live on a farm."

At the time of writing, Rural Health West was in the process of contacting hosts of previous years to see if they would be interested in providing accommodation for the students again, with the organisation also looking to recruit new hosts for the 2022 program.

"If people would like to have a couple of medical students stay with them for three nights, from Tuesday, March 15 to Friday, March 18, please get in touch with us," Ms Dawson said.

"On the third night we usually hold a thank you dinner for the community and everyone that has helped out with the program."

In a workforce update produced by Rural Health West which included data on GPs in the workforce, the Wheatbelt region contained the largest number and proportion of solo general practices, with 16 (or 50 per cent) of the 32 practices being solo general practices.

Across 2019-2021, 14 GPs left the Wheatbelt, but 17 were recruited.

"We have a lot of solo practices in the Wheatbelt, where it's either a shire-owned or shire-supported practice, so we work closely with many of the regional shires," Ms Dawson said.

"For example in Bruce Rock they had a GP who had been there for 20 years retire recently, so we helped them to recruit a new GP and Bruce Rock is one of the Wheatbelt towns that we visit."

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