Message from Director of Rural Clinical School
Associate Professor Riitta Partanen
Reflecting on the milestones of 2023, the UQ Rural Clinical School takes pride in hosting 167 Year 3 and 4 medical students at our 4 Regional Clinical Units, plus 240 short term placement opportunities and 26 extended placements at our Rural and Remote Unit. We are committed to providing our students with the ‘Rural Advantage’, equipping our aspiring doctors with the skills they need to serve regional, rural and remote communities throughout their medical careers.
It brings me great joy to share that close to 40% (113 of 293 students) of the 2023 UQ domestic MD graduating cohort spent at least 1 year at a rural clinical school regional site and over 94% completed a small town rural clinical placement. The RCS team ensures these students have a high quality living and learning experience in each of our teaching locations. My sincere thanks to each and every member of the RCS team who are dedicated to providing a high quality service to our students, our partners and our communities.
Our vision at the UQRCS is to provide world-class medical education and research for better rural health outcomes. We continue to implement end-to-end Medical Pathways across our footprint with our partners, enabling more rural students to study medicine locally, building their connection to regional and rural communities and then facilitating a seamless transition to the local medical workforce.
This year we also welcomed the first cohort of Central Qld and Wide Bay Regional Medical Pathway (RMP) Medical Students. These 62 students starting their journey at the lovely St Lucia campus and will join us in both Rockhampton and Bundaberg for Year 2 in 2024. The teams are excited to welcome the RMP students to the regions.
Our 3 Regional Training Hubs continue to work with external stakeholders, students and prevocational doctors inspiring and supporting rural medical careers and pathways in our footprints.The Regional Training Hubs continue to align their activities and advocacy to grow our region's regional and rural medical workforce.
Finally, I am proud of the acknowledgement of excellence by our RCS staff and teams. Recently, The Rural Clinical School team were awarded the 2023 UQ Awards for Excellence in Service.The award recognises and celebrates individuals and teams that have made an outstanding and significant contribution to delivering excellence in service to students, staff or the wider community. Our Senior Manager Clare Butters, was also awarded the Service award at the 2023 Faculty of Medicine Excellene Awards, an award she most definitely deserved to win.
Additional to our team and staff wins, we were nominationed for 3 additional awards at the UQ Excellence Awards. These included Rural and Remote Mayne Academy and the Regional Training Hub teams who were nominated in the Community Category; and the RCS Wellness Ambassadors were nominated in Mental and physical health, safety and wellness category. The RCS received 13 nominations for the Faculty of Medicine Excellence Awards too. This recognition reaffirms our commitment to innovation and excellence in medical education for over the last two decades.