Introduction Medical schools today are being challenged to educate doctors who are willing and able to practice in areas of poverty and workforce need. In many countries, there is a shortage of doctors practicing in rural and remote communities. There is evidence that locating undergraduate medical education in rural areas increases the likelihood that graduates will choose to practice in under...

introduction: the need for global health training for early-career family medicine physicians is greater than the supply. this paper details the formation of a one-year, self-funded global health fellowship for early-career family medicine physicians. methods: in august of 2012, the university of washington department of family medicine established a self-funded, non-acgme (accreditation counci...

CONTEXT Scope of practice is an important factor in both training and recruiting rural family physicians. PURPOSE To assess rural Idaho family physicians' scope of practice and to examine variations in scope of practice across variables such as gender, age and employment status. METHODS A survey instrument was developed based on a literature review and was validated by physician educators, ...

BACKGROUND Retaining health workers in rural areas is challenging for a number of reasons, ranging from personal preferences to difficult work conditions and low remuneration. This paper assesses the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on willingness to accept postings to deprived areas among medical students in Ghana. METHODS A computer-based survey involving 302 fourth year medi...

INTRODUCTION The Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), like almost all countries, is faced with a shortage of qualified health workers in rural and remote areas. The situation has worsened due to the unbalanced distribution of the health workforce, resulting from a tendency to gravitate to more central areas. METHODS This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the proportion and associated f...

Rural America needs family doctors. Not only does it need more doctors, it needs family doctors that are well trained, enthusiastic, and committed to rural careers—careers that present both challenges and joys distinct from those of their urban colleagues. As the vast majority of physicians in small towns are family physicians, America depends on family medicine educators to identify, recruit, ...

BACKGROUND Rural areas of the United States are perennially medically underserved, and the state of Illinois is no exception. A recent survey showed that 75 of Illinois' 84 rural counties are primary care physician shortage areas. In response to this chronic physician shortage, the Illinois Rural Medical Education (RMED) Program was developed by the University of Illinois College of Medicine at...

Our focus in this study was to determine if demographic variables, including specifically rural upbringing, showed any association with a measure of empathy among family medicine residents at site.