Rural net migration of Canada's rehabilitative and technical health care workers

Recruitment and retention of health care providers continue to be problematic for rural Canada. Both imply movement from source to destination areas. But analyses of mobility patterns, especially to and from rural areas, do not exist for most of Canada's health care occupational groups. As an exploratory study, this paper presents national summaries of internal migration trends of personnel in selected rehabilitative and technical occupations. Census data are employed to determine migration counts and rates with a focus on rural net migration of these health care providers. In general, their mobility patterns are similar to that of the general population: rural net losses in the 1980s during the "turnaround of the turnaround," rural net gains in the early 1990s during the "rural rebound" and then rural losses again in the late 1990s, the "turnaround of the rural rebound." However, there are a number of differences for some of these health care occupations, and these are examined in the paper using data from three 5-year census migration periods: 1986-1991, 1991-1996 and 1996-2001.