The Allied Health Rural Development Pathway has celebrated its first major milestone, with speech pathologist Amy Gray the first participant to complete her training.
Based in Wide Bay, Amy completed training modules in clinical skills, safety and quality, leadership, workflow and demand management, service evaluation and planning, and a range of other topics. Amy said progressing to Senior Speech Pathologist was well worth the hard work. "I first took on the Rural Development Pathway because it seemed like a good opportunity to develop my clinical and non-clinical skills," she said. "I really like the variety of my job and working with the community. The broad caseload I have here has helped to give me experience in a lot of different aspects of speech pathology."
The purpose of the Rural Development Pathway is to help support rural and remote health services to recruit and retain allied health professionals, as well as fast-track early career practitioners’ learning and development. It is led by the Allied Health Professions’ Office of Queensland, Clinical Excellence Division, and supported by the Cunningham Centre, Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service.
Queensland’s Chief Allied Health Officer Julie Hulcombe said the development pathway was helping to recruit the right health professionals. "Rural recruitment of health professionals has always been a challenge, especially in a state as large as Queensland," Julie said. "The Rural Development Pathway was created to address this issue by giving health facilities some flexibility with their recruitment processes and giving health professionals strong incentives to develop their careers in a rural area, while getting the chance to work in a really interesting job in a rural or remote community."
"This program is all about developing first-rate clinicians to provide high quality care for people in rural areas, and Amy has been an excellent example of that. I’m sure she’ll also serve as a great example to others across Queensland who can see the same opportunities she did."
The rural development pathway is between 24 and 36 months in duration, culminating in a formal evaluation conducted by a senior practitioner from outside the local health service.
PICTURED ABOVE: Amy Gray
