Rural Generalist Education

The Allied Health Rural Generalist Education Framework (PDF 9955 kB) was created in 2015-16 to support the development of rural generalist training programs for seven allied health professions: nutrition and dietetics, medical radiation practice, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry and speech pathology. Profession-specific information for social work and psychology was added in 2018, and for exercise physiology in 2023.

The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association completed a project for Queensland Health in 2018 to design the foundations of an accreditation system for post-graduate rural generalist education programs for the allied health professions. The project outputs included a:

• Project completion report (PDF 1005 kB)
• Accreditation system key documents including competency framework (PDF 1424 kB)

The Office of the Chief Allied Health Officer engaged James Cook University from 2017 to develop the Rural Generalist Program (for graduates) and the Graduate Diploma of Rural Generalist Practice (beyond graduate stage). The education programs are specifically designed to meet the development needs of early career rural and remote allied health professionals and support the implementation of the Allied Health Rural Generalist Training Positions.