Rural Family Physician Perspectives on Wellness and the Role of Training in Supporting Physician Wellness

Research evaluating the well-being of rural family physicians is limited, resulting in minimal understanding of how to prepare family medicine residents to succeed in rural practice postresidency. Our study aimed to investigate factors associated with maintaining wellness within rural family medicine practices and highlight interventions that rural family physicians identify as important to promote wellness among those seeking future employment in rural settings postresidency.

Forty-eight rural family physicians completed an online survey with qualitative and multiple-choice items including the Mini-Z about physician demographics, burnout, and wellness. We conducted data analysis using NVivo 12 software for qualitative analyses and R 3.6.1 software for descriptive statistics.

The majority of participants reportedly maintained wellness in rural family practice (maintenance of wellness=79.17%; denied burnout=62.26%). Burnout rates were similar to the national burnout rates for family physicians (37.74% vs 46%). Participants identified multiple residency interventions that could be implemented to prepare rural family physicians to succeed.

This study highlights factors that are associated with the maintenance of wellness among rural family physicians. This is the first study to investigate rural family physician perspectives on residency interventions that may have positive outcomes on wellness postresidency.