CHERI PhD student has just returned from her visit to Australia, generously funded by a Wiley/ASME travelling grant.
Kirsty was awarded the travelling fellowship for the project entitled: "Promoting Practice in underserved communities and specialities: a pull factor for widening access to underrepresented groups?"
Kirsty's first visit was to Curtin Medical School in Perth, West Australia. She met with academic, teaching and research staff, as well as those working within admissions and student support to discuss the approach, ambitions and concerns of this ‘new’ school, which has a focus on producing doctors to practice in underserved communities.
Following this, she visited Monash School of Medicine, Melbourne abd met with staff members to discuss adjustments Monash has made to widen access and to support applicants from indigenous backgrounds into and through healthcare training.
Finally, Kirsty received a warm welcome at the Renmark campus of Flinders’ Rural Health South Australia. The staff discussed the development of the Parallel Rural Community Curriculum (PRCC), their focus on practical ways to enhance student learning and experience, and the active role their staff play in promoting their favoured values, ethos and practices within the school and clinics.
Overall, the travelling fellowship provided an invaluable opportunity to consider issues related to widening access and staffing underserved areas from a wide range of new perspectives. These illuminated some ‘wicked problems’ within the UK context in a new light, and offered innovative approaches to start addressing these. It also provided fantastics opportunities to build connections to the Australian research community.