Across rural and regional Australia, communities are ageing, and the shortage of health professionals is increasingly evident.
At Beaufort and Skipton Health Service (BSHS) in rural Victoria, allied health student placements have become a vital strategy for bridging gaps in aged care service delivery caused by persistent workforce shortages and barriers to accessing essential services. As a small rural health service, BSHS have 63 aged care, subacute and acute beds with a total working full time equivalent of 105 staff working across two sites.
For the past nine years, the UDRH, through the Going Rural Health Program, has partnered with BSHS to support, grow and diversify allied health student placements. This collaboration has helped bring students and clinical educators to the health service to deliver much-needed care, enhance services, and support allied health practitioners while gaining valuable rural experience.
More recently, this partnership was strengthened through additional funding from the Australian Government’s expansion of the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training (RHMT) program into aged care services. Working with Monash University, the funding enabled Going Rural Health and BSHS to work more closely to address the health service’s ongoing allied health needs, particularly in aged care, as well as the upskilling and education of supervising and care staff.
Throughout 2024, BSHS hosted 17 allied health students, across physiotherapy (12 students), occupational therapy (two students), optometry (two students) and social work (one student). Using a service-learning model, students were supported with collaborative clinical supervision to apply their coursework and skills to daily healthcare delivery. The students provided reablement therapy to older adults, helping to maximise their physical capacity, safety, social interaction, and overall well-being.
Students from multiple disciplines were placed at the service simultaneously, creating valuable opportunities for interprofessional education activities. This collaborative environment fostered an inter-disciplinary approach to care, further enriching the students’ learning experiences.
For many older adults residing in long-term care there are challenges to accessing optometry services. Last year, GRH and BSHS collaborated with The University of Melbourne Department of Optometry & Vision Sciences to co-design and implement a successful two-week pilot optometry placement. Two final year students provided much-needed vision and eye health assessments, prescribed new glasses, and delivered education to clients, their families, and staff.
One optometry student reflected on the impact of their rural placement experience, highlighting both personal growth and community connection:
“I chose to do a rural placement here in Beaufort and Skipton because I feel like I wanted to challenge myself, try something new, and feel like I can give back to the community that may not get access to care. In particular, in a rural setting, everyone’s very grateful that we’re here. They’re also really willing to have a chat and let students really have hands-on experience.”
BSHS has identified ongoing priority areas including optometry, oral health, and speech pathology—services that have historically been limited, difficult to source or simply unavailable to the local community. In addition to consolidating optometry placements in 2025, plans are in the pipeline to roll out pilot placements for Speech Pathology and Oral Health.
Kim Stevens, BSHS Learning and Development Manager, shared her passion for supporting students:
“By embracing innovation, the collaboration with Going Rural Health has enabled our health service to access services that are limited and hard to reach. This provides improved quality of care and outcomes for our consumers, exceptional learning opportunities for our students and increases in skill development for staff.”
BSHS was a national top three finalist in the 2024 Local Hero Award from the Australian Collaborative Education Network. The award noted that BSHS’s contribution to students’ education and opportunities was above and beyond the expectations of a small organisation. In 2023, BSHS won first place in the Small Employer of the year at both the Australian and Victorian Training Awards, highlighting their commitment to ongoing education and collaboration with Going Rural Health.
For more information on this rural aged care student program, please contact Rosie Nicholson at [email protected], visit www.goingruralhealth.com.au, or view the video below.
The authors acknowledge Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training program.
Video link: https://youtu.be/L1y5QVpfGQ0
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