Year 4 students Medicine students undertake a year-long independent learning project (ILP) or honours project with a major research component. Traditionally, most rural campus students returned to Sydney1for this year (a costly exercise) due to a perceived lack of suitable local research projects. In 2017 when our first year 1 cohort commenced, there was no real ILP program at Port Macquarie. Realising this gap in the educational provision, and the wellbeing implications of a year’s move to Sydney for rural students, I became determined to establish a local ILP program at our campus. I I liaised directly with clinical colleagues at local hospitals as well as local General Practitioners and Health Promotion teams to build a group of local supervisors for our students across a broad range of potential projects. I was instrumental in many of these coming to fruition as ILPs, assisting potential supervisors to develop ideas into suitable/feasible formats and write ethics applications. Even when they had limited experience, I supported them to supervise students.  I led these colleagues’ capability development around all aspects of research e.g. designing appropriate research studies, writing successful ethics applications.  Several of these rural clinicians now supervise students annually, demonstrating the positive impact of my supportive influence on their practice becoming more research-based, enhancing career prospects and building UNSW’s reputation for quality rurally-situated research.

My development of the Port Macquarie ILP program has laid the roots of a regional research culture built on strong partnerships with sister institutions and Local Health Districts, another key goal in the Faculty’s Health 25 Strategy. My pioneering efforts meant the entire first cohort of Phase 1 RCS students in the Rural Clinical School successfully completed their research year in Port Macquarie in 2020. Needing at least 12 projects annually at our campus, and intending to grow the program similarly at the other rural sites, I recruited an additional part-time team member to help me build this program, and later added to this with similar positions in Coffs Harbour and Wagga Wagga. We are building sold links between the campuses to develop joint research capacity. I have developed collaborative relationships with the Local Health District Director of Research and acted as liaison for ourcampuses to forge and maintain links with the Local Health District’s Research and Knowledge Translation Unit to benefit the student body . Already our students are creating a reputation for high quality ILP projects, with national impact; publications, presentations at national research conferences and a feature on ABC Radio. The leadership I have shown to support and improve student ILP achievement has built my reputation for excellent teaching practice among students and colleagues.

  I was unenthusiastic to begin with; Dr Ferrington’s enthusiasm and keenness to conduct meaningful research … ignited my interest which ultimately lead to me presenting our research at … research symposiums in 2020 … her mentorship to students young and old has a glowing reputation among the student body (Rory van der Linden, ILP student, 2019).

 As an active member of the Faculty Research Committee and the Medicine Higher Degree Research Committee, I contribute directly to decision-making around the administration of research degrees, and actioning all matters relating to the candidature of HDR students. In recognition of this leadership and influence, in 2019 I was appointed PMQ ILP Co-ordinator and awarded RCS Researcher of the Year , and have become a strong and confident advocate for rural ILP/Honours students on the Year 4 Medicine Committee.