University of Tasmania
Browse
145386 - whole of community facilitators.pdf (280.13 kB)

Whole of community facilitators: An exemplar for supporting rural health workforce recruitment through students’ professional experience placements

Download (280.13 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 00:52 authored by Sandra CoeSandra Coe, Annette MarlowAnnette Marlow, Carey MatherCarey Mather
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.

History

Publication title

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Volume

18

Issue

14

Article number

7675

Number

7675

Pagination

1-11

ISSN

1661-7827

Department/School

School of Health Sciences

Publisher

MDPI AG

Place of publication

Switzerland

Rights statement

Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Higher education; Nursing; Rural and remote area health

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC