Clinical teaching needed
This week’s confirmation in the state budget of the Hospital Infrastructure Fund to kick start planning and development of our new hospital and residential aged care facility in West Gippsland is both welcome and a huge relief.
There is no regional hospital in Victoria that doesn’t combine patient care with medical education. It is hoped that the new hospital, like the existing one already in Warragul, will include a clinical teaching school on the main site.
If we are to address the rural health care worker shortage and provide the same access to quality healthcare for those in rural areas as their metro cousins have on their doorsteps, then we need to train our doctors, nurses and allied healthcare workers in our regional clinical setting, with real patients, in real wards and emergency departments.
Last year a research paper published in the Australian Journal of Rural Health, outlined the importance of engaging health care professionals in research, as well as the obvious advantages of having medical, nursing and allied health students learning alongside clinicians in a real-life clinical setting like a hospital. The Australian Government’s vision for ‘Better Health Through Research,’ outlined in the 2013 Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research, recommended strong partnerships between researchers, health professionals, health services and communities.
Yet medical research in rural areas falls a long way behind what happens in the cities.
While around one third of Australians live in rural areas, between 2000 and 2014 only 1.1 per cent of National Health and Medical Research Council funding was allocated to rural health research.
Also, because of the healthcare worker shortage in rural areas, most clinicians have neither the time nor the energy to engage in research. This means that clinical data, which informs patient care, is largely influenced by metro-based research groups.
Hopefully the new West Gippsland Hospital in Drouin East will be more than about patient and community care, as supremely important as that is.
It’s a chance to create a health precinct for health research, health workforce training and community engagement co-located on the hospital site that attracts and trains the next generation of healthcare workers, introduces them to what is quite simply one of the best places to live in Victoria and hopefully stay to practice and then to give them the access and support to produce quality research that is relevant to locals and their health needs.
Professor Shane Bullock, Head of Monash Rural Health, Gippsland