Building the workforce of tomorrow: The weighting of rural exposure in standardised curriculum vitae scoring criteria for entrance into Australian specialty training programs.

Objective: To determine the weighting of rural exposure within publicly available standardised curriculum vitae (CV) scoring criteria for trainee medical officer's applying into medical and surgical specialty training programs in Australia and New Zealand.

Methods/design: An observational analysis of rural exposure point allocations within publicly available standardised CV scoring criteria for entrance into specialty training programs.

Setting: All Australian and New Zealand medical and surgical specialties training programs outlined by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) who publish publicly available standardised CV scoring criteria for entrance into specialty training were included.

Results: Of the 14 specialty training programs that publish publicly available standardised CV scoring criteria, 8/14 allocate points towards rural exposure. While the allocation of points within this scoring domain varies between the eight training programs, the mean weighting of rural exposure is 13.7%.

Conclusions: The relative weighting of rural exposure varies between the eight specialty training programs who include rural exposure as a CV scoring criteria. The deliberate and strategic construction of CV scoring criteria and inclusion of rural exposure points is important to continue developing the Australian rural specialist workforce. Future development of standardised CV scoring criteria should continue to consider point allocation towards rural exposure and related activities to ensure that the requirements of rural Australian healthcare needs are met across medical and surgical specialties.