Whole of Community Facilitators: An Exemplar for Supporting Rural Health Workforce Recruitment through Students’ Professional Experience Placements

Abstract

The Whole of Community Facilitator model provides support for healthcare students’ professional experience placements (PEP) in rural regions in Tasmania. In Tasmania, rural PEP is challenged as healthcare facilities are often small and have limited capacity for staff to devote considerable time to supervising students during PEP. Recruitment and retention of the rural health workforce in Tasmania is sometimes difficult because the island State is geographically distant from mainland Australia, and predominantly classified as a regional, rural, or remote area. The University of Tasmania, College of Health and Medicine (the College) explored various initiatives to support rural workforce sustainability, and the project discussed addresses this issue by promoting rural healthcare facilities as potential employment destinations for students upon completion of their course. The model supports the delivery of high-quality supervision to students whilst undertaking rural PEP, to foster positive experiences and potentially influence their future career choices. A successful exemplar was trialled in 2012 and implemented statewide in 2017 using a Whole of Community Facilitation (WOCF) model. The initiative supports host facilities, supervisors, host staff, and students and promotes positive placement experiences. The initiative was designed in consideration of Tasmania’s rurality, and uses a flexible and responsive framework.

Supporting nursing and allied health student placements in rural and remote Australia: a narrative review of publications by university departments of rural health

“…Other authors, in discussing the role of UDRHs in enabling the transmission of community literacy, have stated that it was evident that “local administrative staff were significantly more often the source of learning about the local contextual factors” 63 . A whole‐of‐community facilitator model has been reported as being effective in enabling community‐literate placements, by engaging and supporting stakeholders before, during and after placements, and allowing transmission of relevant community information throughout placement sites 64,65 . In the absence of UDRHs, transmission of nuanced community literacy to students and the broader university could be challenging.…”

Bases para la estructuración de un modelo en salud rural en Arauca

“…En esta revisión, diversos investigadores alrededor del mundo plantean estrategias para garantizar el reclutamiento de talento humano (27) o el apoyo con agentes comunitarios (28), los cuales son monitoreados desde las ciudades por profesionales. Cada uno plantea las ventajas de su propuesta y algunos de ellos presentan en sus resultados o discusiones la efectividad de estas.…”

“…En Tasmania, por ejemplo, se garantiza atención en zonas rurales a través de estudiantes de escuelas de medicina (27). Iniciativas similares son expuestas por Gupta et al (30) con las escuelas de medicina ubicadas totalmente en áreas rurales, con prácticas en estos lugares y su posterior seguimiento a fin de verificar su adherencia a ellos como puestos de trabajo, algunos de tiempo completo y otros bajo la modalidad FIFO (first in, first out), es decir, mantienen su tiempo de trabajo entre el campo y la ciudad.…”