Rural placements during undergraduate training promote future rural work by nurses, midwives and allied health professionals

[Extract] Australia's population is highly and increasingly urban. In 2017, just over 70% of residents were living in major cities (ie, Australian Statistical Geography Standard [ASGS]-Remoteness Area [RA] 1).1 At the same time, Australians living in inner-regional, outer-regional, remote and very remote areas tend to be older than their urban counterparts1 and experience poorer health outcomes which increase with remoteness.2 These health inequities have been linked to disparate access to health professionals in rural, remote and regional areas in comparison with major cities.3

The Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training (RHMT) program is one of several federally funded rural health workforce programs aiming to increase the number of health professionals working in rural, remote and regional Australia. This program is focused on enhancing the capacity of universities to work with local health services and practitioners to provide clinical training placements for students in rural, remote and regional locations to promote uptake of a rural health career.