Teaching & Learning
The initial focus of the Centre was to establish and maintain a multi-disciplinary rural platform for training of undergraduate students. We pursued an ‘immersion model’ where students were and still are exposed to the realities of working/caring in a resource-limited environment. Students work within the existing health care system and not alongside it, hoping to provide assistance and support to health care personnel while gaining valuable “real-life” experience at the same time.
Undergraduate and Post graduate students
- MB,ChB students doing clinical rotations in:
- Family Medicine and Primary Care, Community Health and Rehabilitation Studies
- Obstetrics and Gynaecology
- Internal Medicine
- Paediatrics
- Physiotherapy
- Occupational Therapy
- Speech, Language and Hearing Therapy
- Human Nutrition
- Students from various disciplines who spend their final year at the Rural Clinical School (RCS)
- Foreign undergraduate students
Which communities are involved?
Undergraduate students receive training at a number of rural regional hospitals, smaller district hospitals and clinics in the Western, Northern & Eastern Cape.
How do the clinical rotations work?
- Students rotate to these rural towns for a period of 2 to 6 weeks to a maximum of one year, where they are exposed to the health platforms in the town and surrounding areas, including smaller district hospitals and primary healthcare platforms such as:
- Community health centres
- Primary care clinics
- Mobile clinics
- Home visits
- Non-governmental facilities
- Students are actively involved at these service points where they are supported by rural health care practitioners and exposed to the full spectrum of health care services provided at these sites. Time is also devoted to research that focuses on issues that influence the health of local people living in rural areas.