A study on Australian medical graduates has found graduates who did clinical placements in rural areas were far more likely to work in rural areas as doctors than graduates who did not. “Eight years after graduation, rural origin graduates with extended rural clinical school experience were more likely than metropolitan origin graduates without this experience to practise in regional or rural communities,” the team wrote. The team led by Dr. Alexa Seal from the University of Notre Dame studied 1321 graduates from 2011 across 10 universities and looked at where they were practising five and eight years after graduation. Of the graduates, 259 came from rural backgrounds, and 413 did rural medical placements. As part of a government-funded program, the rural clinical school (RCS) is an extended program that places graduate medical students in rural towns for at least one year to encourage rural practice in graduating doctors. The team …