Otago Uni to create dedicated rural health unit
A NEW, dedicated rural health unit will help the University of Otago coordinate better with rural communities — and hopefully better equip doctors to work in rural environments, its director says.
The university announced this week it was creating a new rural health section, which would sit within the general practice and rural health department at the Dunedin School of Medicine.
The university already has a rural postgraduate programme and a rural medical immersion programme.
They will be brought together in the next six months under the umbrella of the new section.
Newlyappointed director and Dunstan Hospital GP Garry Nixon, who is the current postgraduate programme director, said in Australia there were 16 or 17 rural clinical schools and university departments of rural health, but New Zealand had nothing similar.
‘‘Things have developed [in Australia] with proven benefits to rural health, and the rural health workforce.’’
The advantages included doctors being better equipped to work in rural communities, and more doctors choosing to work in the rural field.
The new rural health section would be ‘‘disparate’’.
Staff would span the country from Northland to the south of the South Island, Dr Nixon said.
He described it as a ‘‘virtual campus’’, and said it would allow the university to coordinate better with rural communities.
It was already compulsory for medical students to spend five weeks of their training working in a rural practice.
They could also choose whether to participate in a one year immersion programme in a rural environment.
The main issue for rural communities was supplying an appropriate health workforce.
Some practices and small hospitals in the Otago and Southland regions were struggling to find staff.
A lot of studies had been done on why it was so difficult to find practitioners for rural areas, but the issue was ‘‘com plex’’ and no single reason had been identified, Dr Nixon said.
Last year Otago, the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology, together with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, put together a proposal for a national school of rural health, which is being considered by the Government.