Rural placement experiences in dental education and the impact on professional intentions and employment outcomes—A systematic review

Abstract

The evidence suggests that well-prepared rural clinical placements, which have experienced clinical supervisors, good professional student support from the dental school, provide a valuable clinical experience and are sufficiently funded, can increase intentions to work in a rural location upon graduation. However, there is a lack of evidence in dentistry into whether intentions translate into practitioners taking clinical positions in a rural location. Future research should be planned, which will undertake longitudinal cohort studies to identify factors that have an important influence on rural job choice.

A longitudinal evaluation of the Rural Clinical Placement Program at the University of Sydney Dental School

“…This is an issue faced by many medical and dental education programs as it is ethically challenging to make educational interventions mandatory and assign students to certain settings. 17,58,59 It is therefore possible that the RCPP participants had higher pre-placement rural intentions; however, prior research helps to mitigate this potential bias. First, the 2009 student cohort evalua- 18,19 ; thus, pre-placement almost half of the participants did not want to work rurally after graduation.…”

“…Thirdly, there is considerable evidence in medicine of rural background as a key predictor of rural intentions and rural employment [30][31][32][33][34][35]59 and some evidence of rural background's positive association with rural intentions in dentistry. 17,52,61 As the majority of the USYD graduates were from a metropolitan background, it would not be expected for them to have high rural intentions and given the similar demographics and metropolitan background across the graduate years; rural intentions would be expected to trend similarly to the 2009 cohort. Finally, from 2010 onwards the majority of dental students in the final year (from 70%-79%) participated in the program, thereby minimising potential self-selection bias.…”

The workforce outcomes of dental graduates from a metropolitan school ‘Rural Clinical Placement Program’ versus a ‘Rural Clinical School’

“…In dentistry, clinical outreach programs during training are still in their infancy and there is a lack of actual workforce outcomes reported, with the focus being on identifying rural intentions rather than recording where new graduates are working, which is of more practical value. There is a need for long‐term research into the effects of educational workforce strategies designed to impact on the recruitment and retention of dental practitioners in rural areas.…”

“…In spite of this lack of evidence, a number of rural dental schools have been opened in Australia. It is essential that the working locations of graduates from rural and metropolitan dental schools be investigated, to determine whether the policy of opening rural schools is impacting on graduates’ choice of work location.…”

Exploration of the factors that influence new Australian dental graduates to work rurally and their perspectives of rural versus metropolitan employment

“…[17][18][19] However, in dental education there is a reported dearth of rural outreach programmes investigating longitudinal studies of workforce outcomes, and there is a need to explore the factors that influence rural employment. 20 A longitudinal research study has been described as one which employs continuous or repeated measures to follow particular individuals over extended periods of time, often over years or potentially decades. 21,22 However, often the time, cost and commitment of such projects can deter them being undertaken.…”