About the Rural Clinical School

Welcome to our website and thank you for your interest in Rural Health at the University of Adelaide.

We offer and support a variety of clinical health education programs. The vast area that we cover in South Australia is a beautiful place to live and provides multiple outstanding learning environments for students to develop academically, personally and socially. Our goals are to provide a high quality learning environment for students, to promote rural health as a career, and to form strong relationships between students, community, health services and the University as a basis for their education.

The Rural Clinical School has a wide range of rural based academics and health professionals who are involved in the administration and delivery of health education. Our programs based in rural hospitals, community based clinics and General Practices where students have close contact with experienced teachers in a safe and supervised environment. We are committed to developing student attributes of professionalism, leadership, teamwork, scholarship, cultural and social awareness.

We place a strong emphasis on problem solving and clinical reasoning through clinical placements. As part of clinical placements, students participate in the provision of comprehensive care to a wide variety of patients and clients in multidisciplinary environments. This type of education program prepares our future health professionals and leaders for the 21st century workforce.

The Rural Clinical School offers programs that seek to address the shortage of rural based health professionals. We welcome all students with an interest in rural practice into our program, and we foster links into postgraduate rural training programs. We use multiple distance education platforms and technologies to promote both inter-professional learning and a lifelong pattern of learning.

Many of our graduates have returned to practice in our region and other rural areas. This reflects the great effort our numerous staff, healthcare providers, and community members place in the clinical health programs we offer and support.

Whether you are a prospective dental, medical, nursing or allied health student or simply interested in the way we provide clinical education, I trust you will find our website useful and enticing.

Welcome!

A/Prof David Mills
Head of Rural Clinical School