Medical students

Year 3 - Hills Mallee Fleurieu PRCC

About the HMF PRCC Program

(please click on map above to view the HMF Region in more detail)

The HMF PRCC program is based in Victor Harbor, 80 km south of Adelaide. New facilities (see photo on right) to support the activiites of the HMF PRCC were built in the grounds of the South Coast District Hospital and opened in 2009.

Students are based in medicat practices in Victor Harbor, Mannum. Murray Bridge, Strathalbyn, Goolwa and Kingscote (Kangaroo Island).

The Parallel Rural Community Curriculum (PRCC) is internationally recognised for pioneering Community-Based Medical Education (CBME) in Australia and is funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. Medical students are based for a full year in general practice where they follow patients and doctors through the health service continuum, into the hospital setting and back to the community. The PRCC has been acknowledged as one of the inspirations for the development of the Australian Government’s Rural Clinical Schools Initiative as a successful strategy to encourage students to become rural doctors.

The PRCC program originated in 1997 in the Riverland district of South Australia and has now been expanded to the Greater Green Triangle (GGT PRCC) (2002), Hills Mallee Fleurieu (HMF PRCC) (2006) and Barossa Valley (BV PRCC) (2008) regions. Each region annually offers eight to ten student places. The Barossa PRCC students are drawn from both Flinders and Adelaide University medical programs.

Students can choose to undertake their entire Year 3 clinical curriculum in a rural community setting, principally attached to a general practice, but also learning alongside health professionals in hospitals, community health centres, outreach agencies, Aboriginal Medical Services, and with private allied health practitioners.

The clinical learning experience in the PRCC offers students the opportunity to actively participate in the care of patients over the whole year gaining first hand longitudinal experience of people living with medical illnesses. They learn about the natural history of conditions, diagnosis, management, and how illness affects the family, workplace and community in which an individual lives. Students in each PRCC are provided with a library and study room in their general practice, with a personal computer with Internet and Email access. Structured teaching occurs through general practitioners in each town and through resident and visiting specialists. Local clinical experiences are complemented by the use of distance educational technology (such as video-conferencing and DVD’s), access to Flinders University Library resources and regular teaching by health professionals from Flinders Medical Centre and Flinders University. The PRCC programs are supported in each site by a local clinical educator and an administrative team. Overall emphasis is placed upon the provision of educationally valuable and personally rewarding experiences in rural medicine.

In 2008 a Community Contacts Program was established to provide PRCC students with support from members of the rural communities in which they are based.

For further information contact:

Encounter Bay, looking across to Victor Harbor (left of photo)

Updated April 11, 2011

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