The Rural Clinical Division: a student journey to rural medicine

Background: The University of Queensland has through an Australian Government initiative, established a Rural Clinical Division (RCD) at four regional sites in the southern and central Queensland. Over the fi rst four years of the existence of the RCD, an integrated package of innovative medical education has been developed. Method: The integrated aspects of the RCD program include: The Rural Medical Rotation: Every medical student undertakes an eight week rural rotation in Year 3. Year 3 and 4 MBBS - 100 students are currently spending one to two years in the rural school and demand is increasing. Interprofessional Education - Medical and Allied Health students attend lectures, seminars and workshops together and often share the same rural clinical placement. Rural health projects - allow students to undertake a project of benefi t to the rural community. Information Technology (IT) - the Clinical Discussion Board (CDB) and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) demonstrate the importance of IT to medical students in the 21st century. Changing the Model of Medical Education - The Leichhardt Community Attachment Placement (LCAP), is a pilot study that resulted in the addition of three interns to the rural workforce. All aspects of the RCD are evaluated with surveys using both qualitative and quantitative free response questions, completed by all students regularly throughout the academic year. Results: Measures of impact include: Student satisfaction and quality of teaching surveys – 86-91% of students improved their clinical skills and understanding across all rotations. Academic results and progress – RCD students out-perform their urban colleagues. Intent to work in rural areas – 90% of students reported a greater interest in rural medicine. Intern numbers – rural / regional intern placements are increasing. Conclusions: The RCD proves to be a site for innovations all designed to help reach our primary goal of fostering increased recruitment of a rural medical workforce.

Sudanese Refugee Narratives of Social Distress

This working paper provides an 'archive' of Sudanese refugee narratives of distress. The narratives have been interpreted within through the lens of Bourdieu's social distress.

The myth of the nation: Historiography of New Zealand architecture since 1907

This paper considers the relationship between the recent historiography (of the last quarter century) of “New Zealand architecture” and the historical notion of “New Zealand-ness” invoked in contemporary architecture. It argues that a more recent programmatic uptake of post-War discussions on national identity and regional specificity has fed the tendencies of practicing architects to defer to history in rhetorical defences of their work: the beach-side mansion as a contemporary expression of the 1950s bach; a formal modernism divorced from the social discourse adherent to the historical moment that it “restates”; and so on. The paper will consider instances in the historiography of New Zealand architecture where historians have compounded, consciously or accidentally, a problem that is systemic to the uses made by architects of historical knowledge (in the most general examples), identifying the difficulties of relying upon the tentative conclusions of an under-studied field in developing principles of contemporary architectural practice under the banners of New Zealand-ness, regionalism, or localism, or with reference to icons of New Zealand architectural history. At the heart of this paper is a reflection on historiographical responsibility in presenting knowledge of a national past to an audience that is eager to transform that knowledge into principles of contemporary production. What, the paper asks, is the historical basis for speaking of a New Zealand architecture? Can we speak of a national history of architecture distinct from a regional history, or from an international history of architecture?