Rural/Urban Imbalance

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]