Are medical student results affected by allocation to different sites in a dispersed rural medical school?

Prof Tarun Sen Gupta

qualifications: PhD

contribution: original concept

position: Chair of Medical Education

Australia

Tarun Sen Gupta is Professor of Health Professional Education and Head of the Townsville Clinical School at the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry, North Queensland, Australia. He was in rural practice in Richmond, north-west Queensland from 1987-1993, and has worked in rural medical education since 1993. He is a Rural Generalist Training Adviser for Queensland's Rural Generalist Pathway, a board member of the Rural Doctors Association of Queensland and the Rural Doctors Foundation, and Chair of the ACRRM Assessment Committee.

Prof Richard Hays

qualifications: MD

position: Dean

Australia

medical education, rural health care, workforce

Gill Kelly

qualifications: MS

position: Education officer

Australia

Originally from Liverpool in the UK where I worked as a public health intelligence analyst at Liverpool John Moores University, I now work in Brisbane at the University of Queensland. As a research officer in the Faculty of Health Sciences, I am looking into cancer incidence and mortality in psychiatric patients. I am researching the hypothesis psychiatric patients are diagnosed with cancer at a more advanced stage and / or they fail to access treatment services to the same degree as the general population. As a result, although they are no more likely to get cancer, they are far more likely to die from it. Previous roles have included Evaluation Coordinator in the School of Medicine & Dentistry at James Cook University in Townsville, far north Queensland; the only regional University in Australia offering medicine and dentistry. The curriculum focused heavily on rural and remote health and the School actively recruits students from regional, rural and remote areas of Australia as well as overseas. As a result, more than half of their graduates practice medicine outside of the main capital centres. I have also worked as a criminal intelligence analyst for the police.

Petra Buettner

qualifications: PhD

position: Associate professor