University staff perspectives on determinants of high-quality health professions student placements in regional, rural and remote Australia: protocol for a mixed-method study

INTRODUCTION

In rural areas, work-integrated learning in the form of health student placements has several potential benefits, including contributing to student learning, enhancing rural health service capacity and attracting future rural health workforce. Understanding what constitutes a high-quality rural placement experience is important for enhancing these outcomes. There is no current standardised definition of quality in the context of rural health placements, nor is there understanding of how this can be achieved across different rural contexts. This study is guided by one broad research question: what do university staff believe are the determinants of high-quality health professions student placements in regional, rural and remote Australia?

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

This study will adopt a convergent mixed-method design with two components. Component A will use explanatory sequential mixed methods. The first phase of component A will use a survey to explore determinants that contribute to the development of high-quality health student placements from the perspective of university staff who are not employed in University Departments of Rural Health and are involved in the delivery of health student education. The second phase will use semistructured interviews with the same stakeholder group (non-University Department of Rural Health university staff) to identify the determinants of high-quality health student placements. Component B will use a case study Employing COnceptUal schema for policy and Translation Engagement in Research mind mapping method to capture determinants that contribute to the development of high-quality health student placements from the perspective of University Department of Rural Health university staff.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The University of Melbourne Human Ethics Committee approved the study (2022-23201-33373-5). Following this, seven other Australian university human research ethics committees provided external approval to conduct the study. The results of the study will be presented in several peer-review publications and summary reports to key stakeholder groups.

Identifying features of quality in rural placements for health students: scoping review

OBJECTIVES

To explore and synthesise the evidence relating to features of quality in rural health student placements.

DESIGN

Scoping review.

DATA SOURCES

MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, ProQuest, Informit, Scopus, ERIC and several grey literature data sources (1 January 2005 to 13 October 2020).

STUDY SELECTION

The review included peer-reviewed and grey literature from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development listed countries that focused on quality of health student placements in regional, rural and remote areas.

DATA EXTRACTION

Data were extracted regarding the methodological and design characteristics of each data source, and the features suggested to contribute to student placement quality under five categories based on a work-integrated learning framework.

RESULTS

Of 2866 resulting papers, 101 were included for data charting and content analysis. The literature was dominated by medicine and nursing student placement research. No literature explicitly defined quality in rural health student placements, although proxy indicators for quality such as satisfaction, positive experiences, overall effectiveness and perceived value were identified. Content analysis resulted in four overarching domains pertaining to features of rural health student placement quality: (1) learning and teaching in a rural context, (2) rural student placement characteristics, (3) key relationships and (4) required infrastructure.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest that quality in rural health student placements hinges on contextually specific features. Further research is required to explore these findings and ways in which these features can be measured during rural health student placements.