A group of student health professionals has been given a taste of what it's like to work in rural areas, spending a weekend in the Eastern Bay.

Thirty Auckland based students training in medicine, nursing, social work, and podiatry, stayed at Puwairua marae, took a tour of Whakatāne Hospital and were put through their paces in a mock rural emergency situation with local St John crews.

Auckland based health students working on a patient in a mock rural emergency. Supplied Photo.

The ‘Grassroots' weekend was organised by the Whakatāne Rural Health Inter-professional Programme (RHIP), a student placement joint initiative between the Bay of Plenty DHB Clinical School and the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and Waiariki Institute of Technology.

The programme, launched in Whakatāne in 2013, aims to improve the recruitment and retention of our doctors, nurses and other health professionals in rural New Zealand. The programme is also run in Gisborne.

The students also had the opportunity of enjoying some of the Eastern Bay's great outdoors including kayaking on Ohiwa harbour and visiting the Awakeri Hot pools.

It's the second time Academic Coordinator, Yvonne Boyes has run the Grassroots weekend.

She says for some students being exposed to life in a rural town was quite a contrast to their lives in Auckland. And some expressed an interest in returning to the region in their final year of medicine.