Rural Medical Tours, Skills Days, and Shadowing Experiences

Rural Medical Skills/Student Tours

Skills Clinics are arranged by the RPAP Medical Student Initiative Coordinator and Rural Medical Student Representatives, as part of a rural site visit. Local health care professionals are recruited to teach students specific procedural skills such as starting IVs, casting and suturing.

Attend these clinics to learn basic medical skills taught by rural physicians and other health care professionals. Rural hospital tours (weekend and day) are scheduled throughout the year to rural communities. The tours typically follow the format of guest speakers, a hospital tour, and a skills learning component. There may also be an EMS in-service and scenarios as well as fire/search and rescue. Typically, there is a trip to a local attraction. Participation occurs through the RPAP-supported Rural Medical Interest Groups at the Universities of Alberta and Calgary. Priority is given to medical students who have not participated in a previous tour.

For more information, please see the Rural Medicine Interest Groups section of this site.

Shadowing Program

The shadowing program was developed after talking to participants on the medical student rural hospital tours. These students felt that they would not get enough exposure to rural medicine in their early medical school education. The shadowing program is an attempt to increase the rural experience of early careerists by having medical students follow rural physicians for a weekend on call. This gives them another opportunity to see what rural medicine has to offer. Hopefully, this exposure will generate future and continued interest in rural medicine. There are approximately 50 rural sites involved with over 150 physicians who are willing to have a medical student shadow them for all or part of a weekend. The response from the preceptors and the medical students who have participated to date has been very positive.

For more information, please see the Rural Medicine Interest Groups section of this site.