Educational interventions to ensure provision of doctors in rural areas - a systematic review.

Introduction: Recruiting doctors in rural areas is challenging. Various educational interventions have been introduced in many countries. This study aimed to explore undergraduate medical education interventions introduced to recruit doctors to rural areas, and the results of these interventions.

Educational interventions to ensure provision of doctors in rural areas - a systematic review.

Background: Recruiting doctors in rural areas is challenging, and various educational interventions to ensure the provision of doctors in rural areas have been introduced in many countries. This study aimed to collect knowledge about the undergraduate medical education interventions that have been introduced in order to recruit doctors to rural areas, and the results of these interventions.

Material And Method: We undertook a systematic search in the databases Cinahl, Eric, Medline and PsycInfo using the search words rural, remote, workforce, physicians, recruitment and retention.

Doctors educated in Bodø - who are they and where do they work?

Background: Every year since 2009, up to 24 medical students at UiT The Arctic University of Norway have undertaken the last two years of their undergraduate medical education in Bodø (referred to as the Bodø model). We mapped the municipalities where the students had grown up, their preferences as to future specialties, where they worked and what they worked with after Part 1 of their specialist training.

Material And Method: Medical students who graduated from the Bodø model in the period 2012-18 completed a questionnaire in the first week of their sixth year of study, containing questions about where they had grown up and their preferences for future place of work and specialty.

Rural general practice staff experiences of patient safety incidents and low quality of care in Norway: an interview study.

Background And Objectives: General practitioners (GPs), nurses and medical secretaries (practice staff) are responsible for the continuous provision of safe care in rural general practice. Little is known about their role in situations where patients were or could have been harmed in a rural setting. Therefore, we sought to investigate rural general practice staff experiences of patient safety incidents and low quality of care.

Rural general practice patients' coping with hazards and harm: an interview study.

Objective: The aim of this study is to identify and analyse rural general practice patients' experiences of hazards and harm that comprise adverse events, and their strategies for coping with them.

Design: Interview study using systematic text condensation and coping strategy theory in an abductive analysis process.

Setting: Nine rural general practice clinics in Norway.

Does the University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway educate doctors to work in rural communities?

Background: When Storting (the Norwegian Parliament) resolved in 1968 to build the University of Tromsø, the purpose of the study model was to promote recruitment and a stable GP density throughout North Norway. We wanted to shed light on the degree to which GPs and doctors in health trusts who were graduates of the University of Tromsø work in rural and central municipalities, and at university hospitals and other hospitals respectively.

Material And Method: We used de-identified data covering 406 GPs and 909 doctors in health trusts who had graduated from the University of Tromsø in the period 1979 – 2012.

Designing medical internships to improve recruitment and retention of doctors in rural areas.

Background: The medical internship as a way of exposing young doctors to training in a rural context is regarded as a useful tool to recruit and retain doctors in rural areas. Norwegian health authorities tested an arrangement of early sign-up for medical internships in the Finnmark County in Norway.

Objective: To report on the effects of the early sign-up for medical internship.

Duration of general practitioner contracts.

Background: The regular GP scheme is intended to promote continuity in the relationship between doctor and patient. The duration of GP contracts is therefore a key factor in the success of the scheme. This study examines how long the GP contracts last and whether their duration varies according to doctors' gender and age, municipality size and list size.

Decentralized nursing education in northern Norway: a basis for continuing education to meet competence needs in rural Arctic healthcare services.

Background: Ensuring a sufficient nursing workforce, with respect to both number and relevant professional competencies, is crucial in rural Arctic regions in Norway. This study examines the continuing education (CE) of nurses who graduated from a decentralized nursing programme between 1994 and 2011.

Objective: This study aims to measure the extent to which the decentralized nursing education (DNE) in question has served as a basis for CE that is adapted to current and future community health care service needs in rural Arctic regions in northern Norway.

Use of health care in the main area of Sami habitation in Norway - catching up with national expenditure rates.

Introduction: For many years political and professional concerns have centred on the health service access of Norway's modern Indigenous Sami people. Thirty years ago, a study determined that a low rate of health expenditure on Sami patients had lead to inferior health services for the Sami people, with their average consultation rate 6 times lower than the Norwegian national average. Since 1980, there have been few studies of differences in the utilization of medical services between the Sami people and the rest of the Norwegian population.

Forty years of allocated seats for Sami medical students - has preferential admission worked?

Introduction: This article examines the effects of a special admission policy for Sami medical students in Norway. In the 1960s, public health and health care were found to be poorer in Sami communities than in the rest of Norway. There were few doctors and none of them spoke Sami.

[Is decentralisation of specialised healthcare beneficial in social and financial terms?].

Background: This article examines the issues of whether decentralisation of specialised healthcare is socially and economically beneficial, who benefit from it, and who carry the costs.

Material And Method: Data for this study was drawn from an out-patient clinic in the town of Alta in northern Norway. A cost analysis was done based on 5026 consultations in an out-patient clinic over a six-month period in 2002.