“You get exposed to a wider range of things and it can be challenging but very exciting at the same time”: enablers of and barriers to transition to rural practice by allied health professionals in Australia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Rural background and training have previously been found to increase the likelihood of rural practice. However, practitioners of many health professions remain in shortage in rural and remote Australia. This study builds on previous work in that it includes medical, nursing and allied health professions, considers the role of the health professional's family in employment decisions, and includes a broader array of factors influencing employment preference and the preferred location of practice. The survey also examines when students might work in a rural area.
Health and Health Practice in Rural Australia: Where are We, Where to From Here?
Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care, 2005
This paper provides an overview of rural health discourse in Australia highlighting contemporary rural health practice, models of care and the challenges experienced in recruiting and retaining an effective workforce. Socioeconomic difficulties, inequitable access to services including education and health, lower employment levels, harsher environments, occupational hazards, and geographic and social isolation are factors identified as contributing to rural disadvantage. These concerns are described by health professionals when asked if they would consider rural practice as a career option. New initiatives designed to improve the recruitment and retention of health practitioners including nurses to "the Australian bush" are explored.
Australian Journal of Rural Health, 2008
Objective: To survey allied health professionals in one region of New South Wales. Design: A questionnaire designed to give a profile of the allied health workforce was mailed to 451 practitioners from 12 health professions between July and September 2005. Setting: The region included the upper Hunter Valley, Liverpool Plains, New England Tablelands and North‐west Slopes and Plains of New South Wales. Main outcome measures: The overall response was 49.8%, although the response rates varied between disciplines. Data were collected for a wide range of dependent variables. Results: Pharmacists were the most numerous respondents (21.8%), followed by physiotherapists (17.3%), psychologists (12.4%), radiographers (11.1%) and occupational therapists (10.6%). These five professions made up 73.3% of respondents. Approximately 75% of the sample worked in Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Areas (RRMA) 3 and 4 sized towns. The female to male ratio was 3:1. The mean age was 43 years, the avera...
PLOS global public health, 2024
Australia, in common with many countries globally, has a shortage of doctors working rurally. Whilst strategies and current research focus on recruitment, attrition from rural practice is a significant determinant of such shortages. Understanding doctors' decisions to stay or leave, once recruited, may provide further insights on how to address this rural differential. This study comprises a qualitative study of 21 recently recruited nationally-trained doctors and international medical graduates to a rural area of New South Wales, Australia. Interviews focused on their experiences prior to and within rural practice, and how these influenced their future career intentions. We used reflexive thematic analysis with each interview coded by two researchers to build an explanatory framework. Our findings comprise five themes which applied differentially to nationally-trained doctors and international medical graduates: connectedness across professional, personal and geographic domains, how multi-faceted connectedness was, and dissonance between participants' expectations and experiences. Amongst nationally-trained doctors, connectedness stemmed from prior rural experiences which engendered expectations founded upon their ability to develop community-level relationships. Experiences were mixed; some described difficulties maintaining a boundary between their personal and professional lives, which encroached upon their ability to embed within the community. International medical graduates' expectations were cultivated by their pre-conceptions of Australian postgraduate training but they lamented a lack of professional opportunities once in practice. Moreover, they described a lack of professional relationships with local, nationally-trained, doctors that could help them embed into rural practice. This study highlighted that when connectedness occurs across professional, geographic and personal domains doctors are more likely to continue rural practice, whilst illustrating how the importance of each domain may differ amongst different cadres of doctor. Supporting such cadres develop supportive interrelationships may be a low hanging fruit to maximise retention.
2016
This study aimed to provide information about the decision making process nursing and allied health students and recent graduates undertake when they consider rural and remote practice. This qualitative study drew on the experiences of 85 participants. Recommendations arising from the study are focused around promoting and marketing rural and remote practice, providing and supporting rural practice experiences to students and early career professionals, supporting the transition to rural and remote practice, and developing career pathways in rural and remote Australia. This can best be achieved if a rural pathway approach captures opportunities at critical times to influence those modifiable decision making factors found in the literature and reported by the study participants.
We attended the HWA session in Brisbane on 21 September 2011. One of the conclusions provided by the workshop facilitator at the end of the session was the need for more research, particularly qualitative data, in rural settings. We would like to share some insights based on our exploratory qualitative study: Extended Health Care Practitioner Roles in Medication Supply and Management in a Rural Community (we have attached a copy of the final report of the research with this submission). The study specifically focussed on the involvement of various health care providers (e.g. medical practitioners, nursing staff, pharmacists) in medication supply and management processes in a defined rural community in Queensland, with a view to identify issues and gaps within the medication cycle and to inform potential stakeholders of potential roles for pharmacy (pharmacists and pharmacy support staff) to enhance quality use of medicines and provide support mechanisms in a rural setting. The study...
Associations between rural background and where South Australian general practitioners work
Medical Journal of Australia, 2000
To determine the association between rural background on practice location of general practitioners (GPs) (rural or urban). Design: Comparison of data from two postal surveys. Subjects: 268 rural and 236 urban GPs practising in South Australia. Main outcome measures: Association between practice location (rural or urban) and demographic characteristics, training, qualifications, and rural background. Results: Rural GPs were younger than urban GPs (mean age 47 versus 50 years, P< 0.01) and more likely to be male (81% versus 67%, P= 0.001), to be Australian-born (72% versus 61%, P= 0.01), to have a partner (95% versus 85%, P=0.001), and to have children (94% versus 85%, P=0.001). Similar proportions of rural and urban GPs were trained in Australia and were Fellows of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, but more rural GPs were vocationally registered (94% versus 84%, P=0.001). Rural GPs were more likely to have grown up in the country (37% versus 27%, P=0.02), to have received primary (33% versus 19%, P= 0.001) and secondary (25% versus 13%, P= 0.001) education there, and to have a partner who grew up in the country (49% versus 24%, P= 0.001). In multivariate analysis, only primary education in the country (odds ratio [OR], 2.43; 95% CI, 1.09-5.56) and partner of rural background (OR, 3.14; 95% CI, 1.96-5.10) were independently associated with rural practice. Conclusion: Our findings support the policy of promoting entry to medical school of students with a rural background and provide an argument for policies that address the needs of partners and maintain quality primary and secondary education in the country.