Dr Julie Depczynski

Objective: Combined, nursing and allied health constitute most of the Australian health workforce; yet, little is known about graduate practice destinations. University Departments of Rural Health have collaborated on the Nursing and Allied Health Graduate Outcomes Tracking to investigate graduate entry into rural practice. Design: Data linkage cohort study. Setting: Monash University and the University of Newcastle. Participants: Graduates who completed their degree in 2017 across seven disciplines. Main outcome measure(s): The outcome variable was Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency principal place of practice data. Explanatory variables included discipline, age, gender, location of origin, and number and duration of rural placements. Result: Of 1130 graduates, 51% were nurses, 81% females, 62% under 21¿years at enrolment, 23% of rural origin, 62% had at least one rural student placement, and 23% had over 40 cumulative rural placement days. At the time of their second Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency registration, 18% worked in a ¿Rural principal place of practice.¿ Compared to urban, rural origin graduates had 4.45 times higher odds ratio of ¿Rural principal place of practice.¿ For graduates who had <20 cumulative rural placement days, compared to zero the odds ratio of ¿Rural principal place of practice¿ was the same (odds ratio¿=¿1.10). For those who had 20-40 rural placement days, the odds ratio was 1.93, and for >40 rural placement days, the odds ratio was 4.54). Conclusion: Rural origin and more rural placement days positively influenced graduate rural practice destinations. Outcomes of cumulative placements days may compare to immersive placements.

Objective: Linking enrolment and professional placement data for students' from 2 universities, this study compares characteristics across universities and health disciplines. The study explores associations between students' location of origin and frequency, duration and type of placements. Design: Retrospective cohort data linkage. Setting: Two Australian universities, Monash University and the University of Newcastle. Participants: Students who completed medical radiation science, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy or physiotherapy at either university between 2 February 2017 and 28 February 2018. Interventions: Location of origin, university and discipline of enrolment. Main outcome measure(s): Main measures were whether graduates had multiple rural placements, number of rural placements and cumulative rural placement days. Location of origin, discipline and university of enrolment were the main explanatory variables. Secondary dependent variables were age, sex, socio-economic indices for location of origin, and available placements. Results: A total of 1,315 students were included, of which 22.1% were of rural origin. The odds of rural origin students undertaking a rural placement was more than 4.5 times greater than for urban origin students. A higher proportion of rural origin students had multiple rural placement (56.0% vs 14.9%), with a higher mean number of rural placement days. Public hospitals were the most common placement type, with fewer in primary care, mental health or aged care. Conclusions: There is a positive association between rural origin and rural placements in nursing and allied health. To help strengthen recruitment and retention of graduates this association could be further exploited, while being inclusive of non-rural students.