title: Maximising the world wide web for high quality educational and clinical support to health and medical professionals in rural areas.
abstract: Attracting and retaining medical and allied health professionals to rural and remote regions is a perennial problem, world-wide. It is exacerbated by the associated problem of providing high quality, cost-effective educational and clinical support to health professionals and trainees located in such areas. The world wide web is being used as a tool to address these twin problems to provide a means of communication, interaction and educational and clinical support to geographically dispersed and isolated pools of users. An interactive electronic notice board has been developed as a clinical problems' discussion forum to act as a venue for critical debate about clinical issues and to provide a searchable archive of information to assist in the management of clinical problems. A description of the forum will demonstrate the potential of the world wide web as a learning and a clinical support tool.
authors.affiliation: Division of Community and Rural Health, School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia. rural.health@utas.edu.au
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thomson
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D004496:Education, Continuing / Q000379:methods*; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing / Q000379:methods; D005180:Faculty, Medical / Q000592:standards; D020407:Internet; D019035:Rural Health Services