KBC Australia was commissioned by Health Workforce Australia to facilitate the development of the National Rural Medical Generalist Framework. The aim of the project was to develop the appropriate balance between generalist and specialist medical services to meet community need, and to increase medical generalist postgraduate education available across rural and remote settings.
The project had the following objectives:
- Develop a national framework for the delivery of common training pathways and placements to support rural medical generalist training, and
- Evaluate state and territory projects and assess the evidence for efficacy of a national approach to improvements in educating rural medical generalists.
The project methodology included:
- The development of an evaluation framework to reflect the key objectives of jurisdiction level projects that were funded by HWA, in order to progress the implementation of rural generalist pathways in these jurisdictions
- Undertake evaluations of the funded projects
- Identify key learnings from these projects to inform the National Rural Medical Generalist Framework
- Undertake broad consultation across health service sector jurisdictions, universities and other medical postgraduate education providers, generalist and medical specialist colleges, and relevant medical peak bodies to identify key elements of a framework to evaluate funded projects post implementation
- Facilitate the development of the National Framework for the Rural Medical Generalist Pathway.
This project highlighted the complexity of the medical education and training environment; identified challenges in providing clinical placements and supervision for undergraduate and postgraduate training; identified options for innovative prevocational and vocational training placements and supervision; developed an integrated training model for rural medical generalists, identifying the necessary governance and leadership functions at a national, state and territory and regional level.
This 12 month project was concluded on time and on budget, and the final Framework was accepted by HWA.
