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

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.

We undertook a systematic search in the databases Cinahl, Eric, Medline and PsycInfo using the search words rural, remote, workforce, physicians, recruitment and retention. We included articles that met the following criteria: the educational interventions were clearly described, the study population consisted of medical graduates, and outcome measures included place of work (rural/non-rural) after graduation.

The analysis included 58 articles and encompassed educational interventions in ten countries. There were five main types of interventions, often used in combination: preferential admission from rural areas, curriculum relevant to rural medicine, decentralised education, practice-oriented learning in rural areas, and compulsory service periods in rural areas after graduation. The majority of the studies (42) compared place of work (rural/non-rural) of doctors who had graduated with and without these interventions - only two of the studies reported non-significant differences in place of work. In 26 studies, the odds ratio for rural place of work was significant at a level of 5 %, with odds ratios between 1.5 and 17.2. In 14 studies there were significant differences in the proportion with a rural/ non-rural place of work, with differences ranging from 11 to 55 percentage points.

Changing the focus of undergraduate medical education towards the development of knowledge, skills and teaching arenas that equip doctors with competencies to work in rural areas has an impact on the recruitment of doctors in rural areas.