The Urban Community experience, known as the Onkaparinga Clinical Education Experience (OCEP) was established in 2009 as a means of contributing to Flinders Medical School’s emphasis on providing educationally significant and rewarding experiences in medicine.  Students spend a whole year of their studies in the Onkaparinga region in outer metropolitan Adelaide in South Australia.

The OCEP offers the opportunity for students to undertake their entire Year 3 clinical curriculum in an urban community setting, principally attached to a General Practice and a hospital emergency department. Additionally they will avail extensive use of other public and private community health care facilities, including practicing specialists, community outreach agencies, Aboriginal Medical Services, and inpatient and ambulatory hospital services including theatre and psychiatry.

The clinical learning experience in the OCEP offers students the opportunity to actively participate in the continuity of care of patients over the whole year, thus gaining first hand longitudinal experience of health and medical illness, its natural history, diagnosis, management, and how it affects the family, workplace and community in which an individual lives.

Students in the OCEP are provided with a library and study room in the hospital, with Internet enabled computer access. Through utilising distance educational technology such as Video-conferencing, E-mail, DVD’s and regular Flinders staff visits, students have access to the excellent clinical experiences and medical expertise available in the outer metropolitan region at the same time as having access to the intellectual resources of the FMC and university staff.  The Medical School Library also has dedicated resources to enable prompt delivery of requested articles and assistance with literature searches etc.

The OCEP offers a unique longitudinal integrated curriculum similar to the rural based programs, with the advantage of being based in an outer metropolitan region just south of FMC, thus reducing the need for relocation. OCEP offers a great alternative for students unable to move to a rural town due to family and or work commitments with the benefits of a supported longitudinal clinical experience program.

For more information please view to the Onkaparinga Clinical Education Experience (OCEP) site.