Rural Remote Health
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Rural Remote Health · Dec 2017
Encouragers and discouragers affecting medical graduates' choice of regional and rural practice locations.
Access to health care as near to where people live as possible is desirable. However, not enough medical graduates choose to work in rural and regional areas, especially in general practice. The career decisions of recent medical graduates are known to be affected by a variety of professional, societal and personal factors. Internationally, medical programmes have exposed students to regional and rural experiences partly to encourage them to seek employment in these areas after graduation. As such, the Pūkawakawa Programme is a year-long regional and rural experience for selected Year 5 students from the University of Auckland‘s Medical Programme in New Zealand in partnership with the Northland District Health Board and two Primary Health Organisations. A lack of clarity about the drivers of rural and regional career decisions underpinned this study, which aimed to explore the barriers and encouragers for students of the programme to return as resident medical officers to the regional hospital where they had gained clinical experience. ⋯ This study has confirmed the value of the Pūkawakawa Programme as an important contributor to the regional and rural workforce of the Northland District, New Zealand. The value of an academic‑clinical partnership has been shown to support a regional and rural clinical learning environment. Evidence is provided of one way of having overcome barriers to building regional and rural workforce capacity in this district.