Development of a university student-led paediatric clinic in regional Queensland

Introduction: As demand for occupational therapy student clinical placements increases, student-led clinics have become more prominent as an alternative model for practice education. They present opportunities to both occupational therapy students and the community in which they are established. The need for additional services in regional and rural areas of Australia is particularly well recognised. With fewer established services available in regional areas, there are also fewer potential sites for student professional education experiences, highlighting the particular benefits of this model. Objective: To describe the process of establishing a regional university-based student- led paediatric clinic. Approach: This paper will describe how, with the support of a student-led community project team, a regional university established a student-led paediatric occupational therapy service. We will discuss the information gathering processes used to establish the clinic. These include consultation with key stakeholders, benchmarking with other university student-led clinics, surveying previous students about their experiences of student-led clinic practice education, surveying existing clients of the university clinic, obtaining current clinic referral data, and completing a literature review regarding student-led clinics, paediatrics, and regional communities. Specific examples of these processes will be provided. Practice implications: This paper presents a process that can be used to assist with establishing a student-led clinic in a regional area and details how the clinic addresses both student learning through practice education and community needs. Conclusion: The regional university occupational therapy student-led clinic has been developed to support both undergraduate occupational therapy practice education and local regional paediatric needs. Access to health care services has long been a challenge in rural and remote Australia, and clinics such as this can help address this issue, as well as generating unique practice education experiences for undergraduate occupational therapists.