- Title
- Preparing graduates to meet the allied health workforce needs in rural Australia: short-term outcomes from a longitudinal study
- Creator
- Brown, Leanne; Smith, Tony; Wakely, Luke; Little, Alexandra; Wolfgang, Rebecca; Burrows, Julie
- Relation
- Education Sciences Vol. 7, Issue 2, no. 64
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/educsci7020064
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- The future allied health workforce needs to be flexible to meet the needs of an ageing population with increasing chronic health care needs and geographically dispersed populations in many developed countries. Existing research shows the maldistribution of the Australian health workforce, with allied health professionals being poorly represented in rural and remote areas. This mixed-methods longitudinal workforce outcomes study is ongoing to determine the rural and remote allied health workforce outcomes from an immersive student placement program based in rural New South Wales, Australia. Outcomes, to date, show 52% of graduates working in a rural or remote area (RA2–RA5) after one year and 37.5% at three years post-graduation. Students from a rural or remote background were 2.35 times (95% CI 1.056–5.229) more likely to be located in a rural or remote workplace after one year than graduates from a metropolitan background. Graduates provided reasons for their plans to move from or stay in their current position. Four key themes emerged: Seeking new and different opportunities; Better income and job security; Personal change and lifestyle improvement and Level of job satisfaction. An existing program to develop the allied health workforce in rural Australia is demonstrating positive short-term outcomes. Ongoing monitoring of workforce outcomes is required to determine the long-term outcomes for rural and remote communities.
- Subject
- health professional education; health workforce; allied health; rural health services
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1395096
- Identifier
- uon:33814
- Identifier
- ISSN:2227-7102
- Rights
- © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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