WONCA Rural Medical Education Guidebook launched

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An international, open access guidebook on Rural Medical Education was launched on 5 April at the 12th Wonca World Rural Health Conference in Gramado, Brazil. The Guidebook, which has been six years in the making, is a special project of the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice.

Consisting of 71 chapters written by 74 authors, it represents a unique collaboration, with contributions from every continent. It is intended to be a free resource for doctors, educators and others wanting to obtain practical ideas on implementing aspects of rural medical education and to learn from the experience of colleagues in different contexts. As stated in the preface, “Despite the increasing literature and growing evidence for RME [Rural Medical Education], … colleagues around the world expressed the need for a how-to book of practical strategies and ideas for training health care workers for rural practice.”

The material in the book has been arranged into five themes:
  • Framing and resourcing of rural medical education and practice;
  • Medical education in rural settings;
  • Professional and technical support for rural medical educators;
  • Undergraduate medical education; and
  • Postgraduate medical education.
Issues covered within these themes include resourcing rural health; gender and cultural considerations in rural practice; rural medical schools and colleges; teaching, learning and assessment in rural medical education; clinical research in rural settings; undergraduate student recruitment and selection; and advanced clinical skills training.

Though the chapters in the book have a common standard and similar format, authors were given the leeway to express themselves in ways that would enable readers to understand both their challenges and the efforts required, often in contexts of considerable difficulty. The focus of the guide is medical, but it also includes a range of insights about education and social processes that are intrinsic to all learning.

Commenting on the launch, Associate Professor Bruce Chater (pictured), from Queensland, Australia, who is the editor in chief, expressed his great satisfaction with the final product, because it represents the efforts of so many different people, in particular of hard-working and enthusiastic rural practitioners. “This is an amazingly generous effort by so many rural doctors, academics and others. It is a gift from those who pioneered the development of rural medical education over the last 20 years. We look forward to the guide being organic and growing as the next generation take these initials steps further for the health and wellbeing of our rural patients and friends.”

The President of WONCA, Professor Michael Kidd, lauded the new Guidebook. “This book is a wonderful contribution to the medical literature and captures the essence of rural medical practice around the world and the key principles that underpin the work we do as family doctors and medical educators and primary care researchers based in rural areas in each of our countries. I urge you to read this book and be inspired about the contributions made by each of the world's rural family doctors to the health and wellbeing of their patients and their communities."

The Rural Medical Education Guidebook has been published on the web as a set of open-source documents. It is intended to be easily downloadable and accessible around the world. Access the Guidebook .

Ian Couper
[email protected]