Multi-Site/multi-stakeholder evaluation in the medical education sector in Australia: the challenges of "no boundaries”

Abstract

The Spencer Gulf Rural Health School is one of ten Rural Clinical Schools created by the Australian Government in 2002 in response to a critical shortage of rural doctors. These Schools aim to educate 25% of Australian medical students during some of their clinical years in a rural medical setting in the hope that these students will become the rural doctors of the future. When appointed as the evaluator, I devised an evaluation program which would demonstrate the quality and impact of that rural medical education to a range of stakeholders including the Government, the University from which the students originated, the hosting rural health care settings – practices and hospitals- and the community. This paper describes that multi-site/multi-stakeholder evaluation plan. Evaluations already completed include those for students and for staff who supervise the students. The paper describes the everyday challenges of conducting evaluations with respondents dispersed over hundreds of kilometres.