Rural/Urban Imbalance

Experiences of Non-Resident Nurses in Australia's Remote Northern Territory

The purpose of this research was to assess the extent to which the use of non-resident labor in the health sector, specifically non-resident nurses, might address the well-known barriers to recruitment and retention of remote health professionals [from author]

Dental Education in the Rural Community: A Nigerian Experience

This report provides recommendations for initiating, sustaining and expanding rural dental education programs based on the experience of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria where dental students are prepared not only to provide skilled care to individual patients, but also to assume responsibility for the community as a whole. [adapted from abstract]

Women in the Rural Medical Academic Workforce

This study assessed the role of women as fractional full-time equivalent rural academics in the context of significant health workforce shortage and increasing academic demand and concluded that female doctors who are willing to take on part-time work are supporting the rural medical teaching workforce. [adapted from abstract]

Transforming Rural Health Systems through Clinical Academic Leadership: Lessons from South Africa

Rural health training programs for health professionals have been slow to develop in low- and middle-income countries, and the impact of clinical leadership is under-researched in such settings. This report lists recommendations focused on supporting local rural clinical academic leaders; training health professionals for leadership roles in rural settings; and advancing the clinical academic leadership agenda through advocacy and research. [adapted from abstract]

What Interventions Do Rural Doctors Think Will Increase Recruitment in Rural Areas: A Survey of 2778 Health Workers in Beijing

Strategies have been developed by the Chinese government to improve the recruitment of rural doctors. However, the inequitable distribution of doctors has not improved significantly. The objective of this study was to explore the reasons for the poor recruitment and to propose possible strategies to improve the situation. [adapted from abstract]

Getting Doctors into the Bush: General Practitioners' Preferences for Rural Location

The aim of this study is to examine the preferences of general practitioners (GPs) for rural location using a discrete choice experiment to estimate the probabilities of moving to a rural area, and the size of financial incentives GPs would require to move there. [adapted from abstract]

Adherence to Management Guidelines for Growth Faltering and Anaemia in Remote Dwelling Australian Aboriginal Infants and Barriers to Health Service Delivery

This study describes the adherence to infant guidelines for anaemia and growth faltering by remote health staff and barriers to effective service delivery in remote settings. [from abstract]

How to Recruit and Retain Health Workers in Rural and Remote Areas in Developing Countries

This paper aims to outline the magnitude of unequal health workforce distribution in the developing countries; summarize the evidence on the factors that contribute to these imbalances; present a systematic set of policy interventions that are being implemented to address the problem of recruitment and retention of health workers in rural and remote regions of developing countries; and introduce the Discrete Choice Experiment to elicit health workers’ preferences and factors likely to increase uptake of a rural or remote job. [adapted from abstract]

Mountain Midwives of Vietnam

The infant and maternal mortality rates in the mountainous regions of northern Vietnam are 10 times higher than the national average. This 25 minute film tells the story of a Hmong ethnic minority midwife who has been trained to provide maternal care to her community in the isolated Chi Ca commune. [from publisher]

Why Would I Go There? Motivating Workers to Take and Keep Jobs in Rural Areas

Given the complexity of the social, professional and economic factors that influence motivation, this article addresses how institutions make rural job postings more attractive and how they can identify what kinds of incentive packages can attract and motivate young, bright graduates to serve the areas of their country that are most in need. [adapted from author]

Fly-in Fly-out Nursing: Is It for Us? New Graduate Nurses' Perspectives

Fly-in/Fly-out models of health care for rural-remote communities are currently the focus of evaluation and debate, as the health inequalities of rural and remote communities continue to challenge both health service providers and healthcare consumers. This article presents the thoughts and perceptions of new graduate nurses as they explore future career pathways in rural-remote nursing. [from abstract]

Differences in Preferences for Rural Job Postings between Nursing Students and Practicing Nurses: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Lao People's Democratic Republic

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to investigate preferences for job characteristics among nursing students and practicing nurses to determine how these groups vary in their respective preferences and to understand whether differing policies may be appropriate for each group. [from abstract]

Factors that Influence Midwifery Students in Ghana When Deciding Where to Practice: A Discrete Choice Experiment

This quantitative research study used a computerized structured survey containing a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to quantify the importance of different incentives and policies to encourage service to deprived, rural and remote areas by upper-year midwifery students following graduation. [from abstract]

Longitudinal Study of Rural Health Workforce in Five Countries in China: Research Design and Baseline Description

The authors conducted a longitudinal study to explore the current situation and track the future evolution of the rural healthcare workforce, specifically village doctors, in China. [adapted from abstract]

Primary Health Care and General Practice Attachment: Establishing an Undergraduate Teaching Network in Rural Greek Health Centers

This report describes the steps taken by a Greek medical school to establish and maintain a rural primary health care teaching network in order to implement community oriented primary health care and general practice for undergraduate medical education. [adapted from abstract]

Advanced Rural Skills Training: Are Recently Qualified GPs Using Their Procedural Skills?

This study aimed to: describe where general practitioners (GPs) practice in the 5 years after advanced rural skills training; describe the proportion of doctors using their advanced skills; measure doctors’ ratings of the quality of support and how critical the year directly following training is in future career choices; and measure the association between support and use of advanced skills. [from abstract]

Immersing Undergraduates into an Interprofessional Longitudinal Rural Placement

This article evaluates an Australian program that placed students from different health programs together, in a rural environment, for one or two semesters of the academic year to promote interprofessional learning. [adapted from abstract]

Challenges of Working in Underserved Areas: A Qualitative Exploratory Study of Views of Policy Makers and Professionals

This study aimed to elucidate the views of staff nurses working in underserved areas, directors of health facilities in underserved areas and key informants from the policy and education arena on issues of staffing and retention of nurses in underserved areas of Jordan. [from abstract]

Additional Years of Australian Rural Clinical School Undergraduate Training Is Associated with Rural Practice

The objective of this study was to understand the influence of the number of years spent at an Australian rural clinical school on graduates’ current, preferred current and intended location for rural workforce practice. [from abstract]

Career Choices and What Influences Nepali Medical Students and Young Doctors: A Cross-Sectional Study

The aim of this study was to understand medical career choices and the factors that influence medical students’ and young doctors’ career choices in Nepal and to understand what would encourage them to work in rural areas as generalists. [from abstract]

Recruitment and Retention of Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists in Rural Regions: A Meta-Synthesis

is study aims to broaden the understanding of factors associated with recruitment and retention of occupational therapists and physiotherapists in rural regions, through a synthesis of evidence from qualitative studies found in the literature. [from abstract]

How to Conduct a Discrete Choice Experiment for Health Workforce Recruitment and Retention in Remote and Rural Areas: A User Guide with Case Studies

This guide aims to provide easy-to-read information and step-by-step advice on a quantitative research method that can help identify appropriate policy responses to health workforce shortages in remote and rural areas. It uses two case studies to illustrate the challenges and the ways to overcome them in conducting the work. [from author]

Redistributive Effects of the National Health Insurance on Physicians in Taiwan: A Natural Experiment Time Series Study

This study examines the effects of implementing national health insurance on the problem of geographic maldistribution of health providers in Taiwan. [from abstract]

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Human Resources Policy Interventions to Address the Shortage of Nurses in Rural South Africa

Recent policy recommendations have called for increased research efforts to inform the design of cost-effective interventions to address the shortage of health workers in rural areas. This paper takes forward the recent use of discrete choice experiments to assess the effects of potential incentives to attract nurses to rural areas. [from abstract]

Job Preferences of Nurses and Midwives for Taking Up a Rural Job in Peru: A Discrete Choice Experiment

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to evaluate the job preferences of nurses and midwives currently working on a short-term contract in the public sector in Ayacucho, Peru to assess factors that would attract short-term contract nurses and midwives to work in a rural area of Peru. [adapted from abstract]

Nourishing Networks: An Interprofessional Learning Model and Its Application to the Australian Rural Health Workforce

This article describes a model for interprofessional learning developed to address the barriers related to the delivery of interprofessional education in the rural health setting in Australia across a number of health disciplines. [adapted from abstract]

First Steps Towards Interprofessional Health Practice in Tanzania: An Educational Experiment in Rural Bagamoyo District

In this article, the authors describe a pilot program developed by a Tanzania university to train its professional students (dentists, doctors, environmental health officers, nurses, and pharmacists) to work collaboratively with each other and with other health staff at the district level to be sure that staff have the specific skills needed to work in rural districts. [adapted from abstract]

Retention of the Rural Allied Health Workforce in New South Wales: A Comparison of Public and Private Practitioners

Policy initiatives to improve retention of the rural health workforce have relied primarily on evidence for rural doctors, most of whom practice under a private business model. Much of the literature for rural allied health (AH) workforce focuses on the public sector. This study explores sector differences in factors affecting retention of rural AH professionals. [from abstract]

Case Study of the Counterpart Technical Support Policy to Improve Rural Health Services in Beijing

This study systematically evaluated a program to improve rural health services and reduce inequality in urban and rural services by requiring urban doctors to spend time in rural hospitals. The evaluation assessed changes over time in hospital performance and the rural-urban performance gap. [adapted from abstract]

Assessment of Factors Influencing Retention in the Philippine National Rural Physician Deployment Program

In response to the shortage of doctors in remote communities, the Philippines began a progrom to attract physicians to work in such areas for a prescribed 2-year period, but ongoing monitoring shows that very few chose to remain there for longer. This assessment was carried out to explore the reasons for the low retention rates and to propose possible strategies to reverse the trend. [adapted from abstract]