BACKGROUND Inequitable distribution of the medical workforce is an international problem that undermines universal access to healthcare. Governments in many countries have invested in rural-focused medical education programs to increase the supply of rural doctors. METHODS Using a structured five-step approach, a scoping review was conducted to map the existing evidence on the relationship be...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Stroke mortality is 30% higher in the rural United States. This could be because of either higher incidence or higher case fatality from stroke in rural areas. METHODS The urban-rural status of 23 280 stroke-free participants recruited between 2003 and 2007 in the REGARDS study (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke) was classified using the Rural-Urba...

BACKGROUND Although outcomes among people with schizophrenia differ by social context, this has rarely been examined across rural v. urban settings. For individuals with schizophrenia, employment is widely recognised as a critical ingredient of social integration. AIMS To compare employment for people with schizophrenia in rural v. urban settings in China. METHOD In a large community-based ...

Background: To assess the oral health knowledge, attitude, practices and oral health status among urban and rural school teachers in and around Lucknow. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 797 school teachers of rural and urban, lucknow using W. H.O Oral Health Survey (1997) to assess the knowledge, attitude, practices and oral health status. Descriptive analysis was...

The reluctance of physicians to stay in remote and rural hospitals has resulted in a shortage of doctors in these settings, and therefore a decline in the quality of care and an intolerable overload on functioning doctors. However, mature paramedics find it difficult to comply with the demands of ambulance work and look for easier tasks that suit their age. The two problems may have a common so...

Critical illness intersects with the workload of rural doctors in Australia, mostly via their on-call responsibilities to rural hospitals. A significant proportion of these are prehospital incidents - vehicle crashes, farming injuries, bushfire etc. Effective care for such patients requires an integration of prehospital ambulance services, retrieval services and tertiary level trauma services a...

In resource-poor countries, substantial sums of money from governments and international donors are used to purchase equipment for health facilities. WHO estimates that 50-80% of such equipment remains non-functional. This article is based on experience from various projects in developing countries in Asia and Africa. The key issues in the purchase, distribution, installation, management and ma...

We find that the presence of village Internet facilities, offering government to citizen services, is positively associated with the rate at which the villagers obtain some of these services. In a study of a rural Internet project in India, we identify a positive correlation for two such Internet services: obtaining birth certificates for children and applications for old age pensions. Both the...

Beginning with a brief overview of national health care quality improvement efforts, this article describes national initiatives to improve the quality of care and patient safety, along with the challenges of measuring quality of care in rural settings. Next, the article analyzes the performance of rural Minnesota hospitals in the Hospital Compare and Leapfrog initiatives and compares the resul...

Rural hospitals continue to face the threat of closure. Congress passed legislation in 1989 and 1990 to offer an alternative for small rural hospitals; the legislation encourages hospitals to form networks comprising an essential access community hospital (EACH) and one or more rural primary care hospitals. This legislation is a tightly focused program that will affect no more than an estimated...