Introduction: The recruitment and retention of family physicians in rural and remote communities has been the topic of many reviews; however, a lack of consensus among them with regard to which factors are most influential makes it difficult for setting priorities. We performed a systematic review of reviews which helped to establish an overall conclusion and provided a set of fundamental influential factors, regardless of the consistency or generalisability of the findings across reviews. This review also identified the knowledge gaps and areas of priority for future research.
Methods: A literature search was conducted to find the review articles discussing the factors of recruitment or retention of rural family physicians. Results were screened by two independent reviewers. The number of times that each factor was mentioned in the literature was counted and ordered in terms of frequency.
Results: The literature search identified 84 systematic reviews. Fourteen met the inclusion criteria, from which 158 specific factors were identified and summarised into 11 categories: personal, health, family, training, practice, work, professional, pay, community, regional and system/legislation. The three categories referenced most often were training, personal and practice. The specific individual factors mentioned most often in the literature were 'medical school characteristics', 'longitudinal rural training' and 'raised in a small town'.
Conclusion: The three most often cited categories resemble three distinct phases of a family physician's life: pre-medical school, medical school and post-medical school. To increase the number of physicians who choose to work in rural practice, strategies must encompass and promote continuity across all three of these phases. The results of this systematic review will allow for the identification of areas of priority that require further attention to develop appropriate strategies to improve the number of family physicians working in rural and remote locations.
Introduction: Chronic pain is one of the most common and serious symptoms of cancer. Despite the limitations of dose titration using only one type of opioid, the effects of opioid combinations are poorly understood.
Methods And Analysis: This study will be conducted in accordance with the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews of Interventions 6.
Background: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections, and appropriate antimicrobial therapy with agents that minimise resistance is crucial. Despite international concern, adherence to guidelines is still suboptimal. This study aims to determine the effect of the absence of national guidelines and the rate of conformity to international guidelines among physicians in antibiotic (ATB) prescriptions for the treatment of UTIs in adults and detect the factors that are associated with a higher rate of non-compliance.
Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is now generally considered to be a task-specific focal dystonia. For the first time, we wanted to explore the relationship between SD and dystonia from a combined neurological and phoniatric perspective. For this, we studied 115 patients with non-psychogenic SD by a combined neurological and phoniatric evaluation.
Primary care services improve healthcare outcomes and limit unnecessary specialty care. Thus, it is essential to monitor primary care physician demand and supply projections to suggest evidence-based healthcare reforms and promote better healthcare delivery. This study evaluates 28 demand variables, 50 supply variables, and 26 additional variables associated with the demand and supply projections of physicians by reviewing scenarios from other countries, including Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and the United States of America.
