Place identity and belonging: medical and health practitioners in underserved areas
Primary Supervisor: Professor Wendy Hu (opens in a new window)
Despite critical need, attracting medical and health workforce to underserved areas such as outer metropolitan Sydney and rural Australia remains an enduring challenge. Over decades, policy and program initiatives costing millions have been conducted at Commonwealth, State, University, Postgraduate Training, Secondary and Primary education levels, with limited evidence of their effect to date. Much of the effort has focused on motivating students to apply to, and be selected into, medical and health professions university programs, where they may move to study in underserved areas. The strongest evidence for selection and rural programs are outcomes such as a stated intention to practice, and early employment in, underserved areas, and how these relate to demographic factors, such as postcodes where the student lived and was schooled before they started study. While easy to collect and verify, administrative measures such as postcodes are unlikely to capture what it means to belong and feel as if one will work and have a life in an underserved community. Individual students possess different histories, community connections and motivations than can be captured in postcodes and as currently described in research and policy. Migration, for example, means that students who now reside in rural areas are of more diverse backgrounds than in the past.
This project aims to take in new directions the evidence base for education and workforce programs beyond the atheoretical, descriptive and mostly single institution design of current research to generate findings that can be applied both in, and outside the study setting. Using Design Based Research, this project will be theoretically informed and use validated and community engaged methodologies in outer metropolitan and rural settings in NSW and Victoria. The project will leverage the opportunities from new and existing partnerships in NSW and Victoria to build on an established research program in student selection at Western Sydney. Promising pilot data from community consultations in these sites has been collected to inform this project. The research will ask:
What does it mean to belong, identify with and imagine oneself living and working in underserved areas as a doctor and health professional?
The field of medical education and training is inclusive and interdisciplinary by nature. Applicants from diverse disciplinary backgrounds are welcome. The following will be highly regarded:
- Strong academic performance in disciplines relevant to medical education and training. These include education, psychology, sociology, geography, medicine, health professions programs, and others.
- Strong writing skills in the social sciences and/or medicine and the health professions, however these will be developed during candidature with partners such as the Maastricht University PhD Writing program.
- Willingness to travel to rural areas