Rural Health pilot placement strengthens oral health care in rural town

The Department of Rural Health’s Going Rural Health team and Beaufort and Skipton Health Service (BSHS) have strengthened their longstanding partnership through a new pilot placement aimed at improving oral health care for older adults  in rural aged care.

Supported by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s Expansion of the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training (RHMT) program, this placement uses co-designed service learning models to benefit student learning and resident wellbeing.

Access to oral healthcare is a continuing challenge in rural areas, including at Beaufort and Skipton Health Service, where dental and oral health services have been unavailable for several years. As part of this, Going Rural Health and the University of Melbourne’s Oral Health Therapy program explored a pilot placement to address this gap while offering students a meaningful rural experience.

The pilot placement was designed to deliver essential oral health services to aged care residents, provide students with exposure to rural practice, and foster interprofessional learning across disciplines. Oral health is closely linked to overall wellbeing, with poor oral health contributing to malnutrition, dehydration, infection and serious conditions such as aspiration pneumonia.

The placement, which ran in September 2025, delivered meaningful benefits for residents, and more than half of the 41 aged care residents received an oral health assessment by the students over four supervised clinical days.

Students also developed individualised oral hygiene care plans and assessed two community clients, expanding their rural clinical exposure. They delivered three oral health education sessions to nursing, personal care, and allied health staff, helping to build capacity among non‑oral health professionals.

The pilot was a great success and a second placement is now underway with an additional placement scheduled later this year.