Does teaching an entire nursing degree rurally have more workforce impact than rural placements?
Denese Playford
The Rural Clinical School of Western Australia, University of Western Australia
Belynda Wheatland
King Edward Memorial Hospital, Subiaco WA
Ann Larson
Combined University Centre for Rural Health, The University of Western Australia, WA
PP: 068 - 076
Abstract
Education plays a key role in recruitment of health workforce to rural and remote locations. In Australia, Schools of Nursing have set up a variety of educational programmes to encourage rural workforce choices. These programmes include rural campuses and short-term rural placement programmes out of urban campuses.
This study compares the relative workforce impacts of rural campus versus short-term rural placements out of urban campus. The single outcome measure - rural or urban location after graduation - showed that the rural school graduated a significantly higher proportion of rural-working graduates (χ2 4.46, p = 0.04). However there was no difference in the rural workforce choices of students from rural backgrounds, irrespective of their university location (χ2 = 1.45, p = 0.23).
We conclude that both rural universities and affirmative action for selecting rural students into nursing programmes are effective workforce strategies, but that rural campuses have the added benefit of encouraging under-represented rural students to access university education.
Keywords
nursing; rural; education; workforce; undergraduate
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