The Queenstown-based Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust has opened applications for two scholarships worth $30,000 to encourage undergraduate and rural health professional research and professional development.
Trust chairman John Farry, of Dunedin, brother of the late Queenstown GP, said the scholarships aimed to help young people spend valuable time in innovative and challenging overseas situations, then bring back those skills to become the new generation of idea-generators in New Zealand.
''The biennial Pat Farry Trust Scholarship awards $20,000 to a rural healthcare professional in the early stages of their career to travel abroad and gain skills that could improve rural health, both in their own rural community and, hopefully, New Zealand's rural communities in general,'' Mr Farry said.
''The annual Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust Travelling Scholarship awards up to $10,000, which may be divided between two recipients, to students of the University of Otago School of Medicine to travel internationally to a rural situation to observe new concepts, develop their own skills and share their learning with other students when they return.''
Nine medical students have benefited from the trust's scholarship programme since 2011.
