A longitudinal, patient-centred, integrated curriculum: facilitating community-based education in a rural clinical school.

The Greater Murray Clinical School (GMCS) was founded with two main aims in mind one, to provide a community-based learning environment offering diversified clinical educational experiences, and two, by doing so, to help address the doctor shortage for Australians living in rural and remote areas. The GMCS is a community-orientated and community-based clinical school, which has replaced the typical discipline-based curriculum with a longitudinal, patient-centred one. Students are attached to patients--called "the longitudinal patient"--whom they follow through all stages of their care. They share with patients their experience of illness and disease, their varying care needs, and how these are addressed by different service providers. The philosophy of the course, its implementation and our initial experiences are described.