Ashley Lambert - Rural Health in Medical Education: RHiME

Ashley Lambert is a medical student from the University of Swansea in Wales who is currently on the Rural Health in Medical Education track (RHiME).    Episode summary: 01.05  Ashley tells us about her background how she became interested in rural health 02.33  What does she most enjoy about working in a rural area, what does she find most challenging? 08.40  What is RHiME at Swansea University? How is it different from the standard medical curriculum? 17.50  Do they have opportunities to connect with other professions?  19.00  How is she involved in wilderness medicine and does she see it as a part of rural health? 24.30  What has surprised her during her course? 27.45  What makes for a great student rural placement? 34.15  What does she hope her career will look like in the future? Key messages: The best thing about rural areas is the community and the feeling that everyone knows everyone, and the rapport that you have with patients.   As a medical student she loves being in a rural area as there are more opportunities for hands-on experiences.  However it can be difficult to see patients presenting at a much later stage of their illness. RHiME is the Rural Health in Medical Education track at Swansea University.  This track offers rural placements and more of a focus on rural health as well as the undertaking the usual curriculum of medical school.  Regular meetings and collaborations such as mountain and cave rescue, working with rural GPs and district nurses, working on social prescribing, talks about farming and opportunities for different placements in rural areas.  Wilderness and Expedition Medicine Society has similar aims as RHiME, they encourage people to embrace the outdoors and rural life and to stay in rural Wales.  They do a lot of activities, regular group hikes, bouldering, first aid courses, teach people how to tie knots, they also work with rural health doctors and mountain rescue.   Wilderness and expedition medicine includes a lot of prehospital emergency care.  They have medical teaching in the wild such as C-spine management, hypothermia management, splinting, search and rescue, and ultrasound in the field. The RHiME track has not made connections with other rural medical education programmes, but they would be interested in connecting with other students interested in rural health. The practice made her feel welcome, she was able to sit in with all of the practice staff and see the different way that they work with patients, it was useful to see what all of the different staff did as part of their role.  Allowed her to take it at the pace she wanted to and asked her what she wanted to learn.  She was given the opportunity to speak with the patient in her own room, make a diagnosis and management plan before discussing it with the GP.  The feedback was then very useful for her learning. Swansea-Gambia Link is a project that she has been working on which will support student exchanges between the Gambia and Wales.   Contact Ashley: [email protected]  Thank you for listening to the Rural Road to Health! Rural Health Compass