Deployment

This study evaluates the Midwives Service Scheme in Nigeria which engaged newly graduated, unemployed, and retired midwives to work temporarily in rural areas to improve the wide variation between maternal, newborn, and child health indices across geopolitical zones and between urban and rural areas, mostly due to variations in the availability of skilled attendance at birth. [adapted from author]

This study examined the hypothesis that a medical school in a low-resource setting, based on volunteer faculty, can be sustainable and associated with improvement in medical workforce and population health outcomes. [from abstract]

Because nurses are often the first to triage and begin treatment, especially in rural areas, an understanding of how they make decisions in patient care is important. The purpose of this study was to explore the decision-making experiences of the rural novice nurse. [from author]

The aim of this study is to identify and assess factors affecting preference for future rural practice among medical students participating in the Australian Rural Clinical Schools Program. [from abstract]

The objective of this article is to argue that it is important for all stakeholders involved in rural recruitment and/or retention processes to consider their decisions and actions from an ethics perspective. [from abstract]

This article discusses the issues facing rural physicians, analyzes efforts to recruit and retain them, and outlines what it will require to increase their numbers.

These case studies from accross Austraila show how rural and remote health professionals are making a difference locally and give insights, approaches and solutions to similar challenges or problems faced elsewhere. Evaluated solutions for many pressing health issues are presented as well as two big policy issues: building sustainable rural primary health care services, and responding to an ageing health workforce. [adapted from foreword]

This text describes how rural health professionals and rural communities are currently working towards healthy communities. Significant rural issues are analysed with regard to professional practice and personal lifestyles, as well as how these issues could be addressed by innovative future practice or how they present challenges for learning or teaching. [adapted from author]

This paper aims to examine equity of utilisation of general practitioner services in Australia, particularly those living in remote or rural areas. [from abstract]

This report presents an overview of outreach services provided by health workers to remote and rural populations in different countries and contexts. It highlights the potential for alternative health service delivery models, such as mobile clinics and telemedicine, to enhance the attraction and retention of health workers in underserved areas. [from preface]

This technical report presents the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Ministry of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organization and CapacityPlus, using CapacityPlus’s rural retention survey toolkit. The DCE surveyed health professional students and health workers practicing in rural provinces to investigate their motivational preferences for potential strategies to increase attraction and retention in the country’s rural and remote settings. [from publisher]

The focus of this brief is on nurses’, clinical officers’ and assistant medical officers’ job preferences and their willingness to work in rural and remote areas in Tanzania. [from author]

The purpose of this study was to identify determinants of preference for rural job characteristics among fourth year medical students in Ghana including salary, infrastructure, management style, and contract length in considering future jobs. [from author]

In this study, the authors analyze the trends in the geographic disparities of population and physician distribution among the secondary tier of medical care in Japan. [adapted from author]

This paper presents results of an empirical study conducted in Liberia and Vietnam using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) which aimed to predict the likelihood of health workers taking up a rural area job under alternative incentive schemes.

This issue of Voices describe an effort to assess health workers’ preferences in order to determine the most effective incentives for rural service. [adapted from author]

Many countries, including Vietnam, are debating the right mix of interventions to motivate doctors in particular to work in remote areas. The objective of this study was to understand the dynamics of the health labour market in Vietnam, and what might encourage doctors to accept posts and remain in-post in rural areas. [from abstract]

This paper assesses the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on willingness to accept postings to deprived areas among medical students in Ghana. [from abstract]

The purpose of this study was to report on the preparedness of medical students and junior doctors to commit to working in areas of workforce shortage. [from abstract]

For more than 25 years, family medicine residencies have worked with community health centers (CHCs) to train family physicians. This study compares CHC and non-CHC-trained family physicians regarding practice location, job and training satisfaction, and recruitment and retention to underserved areas. [from author]

This article proposes the idea of a new degree course in medicine of a shorter duration to encourage students from rural areas to take up medicine and then provide services in their local areas. [from author]

This article describes an innovative strategy to test a health human resource (HHR) planning and employment model to foster inter-organizational collaboration, knowledge transfer and exchange of nurses between an urban academic health science centre and a remote region in northern Ontario. [from introduction]

This qualitative study was undertaken to understand how practicing doctors and medical leaders in Ghana describe the key factors reducing recruitment and retention of health professionals into remote areas, and to document their proposed policy solutions. [from abstract]

The reported study sought the views of mental health organisation leaders from Gippsland to identify current approaches and potential solutions to the challenges of workforce recruitment, retention and training in rural areas. [from abstract]

This publication presents measures composed by the Dutch Alliance for Human Resources for Health, a group concerned about the global maldistribution of human resources for health, to be taken by Dutch actors to improve the distribution of health staff across countries. [from preface]

This report discusses and analyzes labor market dynamics and outcomes (including unemployment, worker shortages, and urban-rural imbalances of categories of health workers) from a labor economics perspective to address undesirable outcomes (including urban-rural HRH imbalances) more effectively. [adapted from summary]

This article discusses Thailand’s mandatory health service system. Under this system, all early-career health workers from public professional schools serve in rural areas as a governmental worker to maintain the rural health workforce. The system has ameliorated the shortage of physicians in rural areas by substantially decreasing the emigration of Thai physicians to foreign countries.

This paper reviews the evidence on costing interventions to improve health workforce recruitment and retention in remote and rural areas, provides guidance to undertake a costing evaluation of such interventions and investigates the role and importance of costing to inform the broader assessment of how to improve health workforce planning and management. [from abstract]

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of educational factors on the choice of rural or urban sites of practice of health professionals in South Africa. [from abstract]

This study aimed to determine factors that will attract and retain rural and urban health workers to rural Nigerian communities, and to examine differences between the two groups. [from abstract]