The promotion of health careers to high school students in the New England health area: the views of high school careers advisers.

One way to impact positively on the shortage of health professionals in rural areas is to effectively promote health careers to rural high school students. Rural high school careers advisers play a pivotal role in this. In order to assess how rural health careers advisers working in the north-west of New South Wales currently promote health careers to their students, the New England Area Rural Training Unit carried out a survey of the area's high school careers advisers. Of the 47 high school careers advisers, 38 returned completed questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 81%. While only about one-third of careers advisers use visits by undergraduate students enrolled in tertiary health courses (42%), visits by locally practising health professionals (39%) and/or health careers site visits (27%), all careers advisers consider such promotional activities to be most effective. Improved exposure to such effective health career promotional activities for the area's high school, increasing collaboration between careers advisers and health professionals, as well as renewed efforts to identify and to foster interested students prior to Year 10, should lead to an increasing number of rural high school students enrolling in tertiary health courses.