MD8002:03
Rural and Remote Medicine
Townsville
Prerequisites: MD8001
10 tutorials, 20 hours practicals, 20 hours workshops, 20 hours other. First or second semester flexible delivery.
Available to any experienced medical practitioner currently working in a rural or remote location.
Staff: Dean of School of Medicine.
This subject presents definitions and concepts describing rurality (as it applies to rural health care), data on the health care status of rural and remote Australians and the influence of these factors on rural health care policy. This information will then be applied in a practical exercise based on experience as a health care provider.
Learning Objectives:
- understand definitions of rural and remote, particularly as they relate to health care and be able to apply these to describe a rural or remote community;
- understand what it means to be rural and how this affects access to health care;
- demonstrate knowledge of major rural and remote health problems, such as infectious diseases; trauma from mining, farming and road accidents;
- demonstrate knowledge of the problems of particular populations e.g. Indigenous peoples;
- understand the funding and structure of a range of rural health services and the derivation of rural health policy;
- ability to apply these principles to describe health care of certain conditions, such as pregnancy care, diabetes, occupational injury or major trauma.
Assessment by an assignment prior to the residential block describing and analysing the student’s local rural or remote community and its health care system (3,000 words); an assignment by the end of the term describing and analysing the health care experience of one patient and his/her family (ideally one with which the student has been involved) as they are referred from the rural community to a regional centre and back (3,000 words).