Clinical Excellence Through Real-Life Experiences: How Experience-Led Learning is Cultivating Next Generation’s Rural Doctors

Introduction/ Background: This research reports on how "Experience-Led Learning" or "ELL'' can successfully teach rural medical students and doctors. ELL is a novel pedagogical approach developed by the authors, where real-life rural experiences are the natural starting point for knowledge and skills acquisition. The program consists of fortnightly online workshops delivered to all final year medical students undertaking year-long rural placements and any metropolitan based final year students on a rural placement.

Methods: At the end of each workshop, participants were invited to undertake an anonymous survey consisting of questions about the session in genera 1, specific topics covered and what they found most useful. This research was approved by Flinders University Human Research Ethics Committee, project ID 5936.

Results/Evaluation: 96 surveys were completed by 22 individual participants across 8 ELL sessions in an 18-week semester. Key findings included that 100% of responses agreed scenarios based on the facilitator's real-life clinical experiences were helpful, 95% of responses agreed being invited to actively participate as if they were the doctor in the scenario was helpful, 93% of responses agreed being able to discuss differences between the facilitator's case and other cases which they had encountered was helpful and 100% of responses agreed the topics were useful for internship next year.

Discussion: The novel ELL is considered overwhelmingly engaging by the final year rural medical students and effective in preparing them for internship. The data also suggests it is engaging for metropolitan students visiting rural areas too.