The 'why' and the 'who' of choosing a rural Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship: medical graduates' perspectives from a qualitative study.

Introduction: Rural Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LICs) have been shown to produce graduate doctors who are more likely to work rurally than those from other clinical training pathways. The student selection and admission process to rural LICs is a relatively unexplored area. To address this knowledge gap, rural LIC graduates' perceptions on participating in the program and the medical students most suited to an LIC were explored.

Embedding research into the organisational structure of smaller rural hospitals: building research culture and capacity and understanding perceived rural health workforce benefit.

Background: Rural hospitals in Australia have not been afforded the same opportunities for research activity as their metropolitan counterparts. Equitable access to career and research opportunities has been identified as a potential strategy to enhance workforce satisfaction and retention in rural areas. Smaller rural hospitals show potential in being key settings for research; but minimal investment has translated into a lack of action and knowledge.

Evaluation capacity building in a rural Victorian community service organisation: A formative evaluation.

Community service organisations are increasingly required to report on outcomes and evaluate program delivery. While commonplace in clinical health settings, such work is novel to the community sector and can be challenging to undertake given resourcing and evaluation capacity constraints. These constraints are exacerbated for rural community service organisations that face additional resource pressures and lack organisational systems to support such work.

Implementation of a virtual multi-disciplinary model of care for people affected by cancer: a qualitative evaluation.

Objectives: To undertake a qualitative evaluation of the implementation of the Penile and Testicular cancer multidisciplinary meeting (PEN-TEST MDM) model pilot including the acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, feasibility, and requirements for sustaining the model from the perspectives of key informants.

Design, Setting, Participants: A qualitative evaluation of the PEN-TEST MDM model six-month implementation pilot at Barwon Health (Victoria, Australia) (January to July 2024) was undertaken from July to September 2024. Qualitative data was obtained from semi-structured interviews undertaken with key informants, including working group members and end-users (referring and attending clinicians).

Essential service accessibility and contribution to quality of life: a systematic review.

Background: Essential services ensure the health, safety, and well-being of individuals and their communities. However, there is currently a lack of consensus on what constitutes an essential service in Australia. This gap hinders a detailed spatial understanding of essential service provision, access, and influence on populations.

'I Hadn't Ever Really Thought It Was Something That I Could Do': Rural Background Medical Graduates' Pathways to Medicine.

Objective: This study aims to elevate the voices of doctors with rural backgrounds by exploring their experience of applying for medicine and identifying learnings that can further widen access for prospective rural applicants.

Methods: This study is part of a larger qualitative study exploring the experiences of medical graduates from Deakin University's rural longitudinal integrated clerkship.

Design: Qualitative interviews.

Entrustable professional activity use in emergency medicine: A scoping review.

Objective: The objective was to scope the literature and describe the extent and type of evidence about entrustable professional activities (EPAs) in postgraduate emergency medicine (EM) education.

Methods: Joanna Briggs Institute's methodology was used to find and extract relevant data from documents found in Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL, supplemented by a gray literature search using Google Advanced for EPA frameworks. Eligible documents discussed EPAs for doctors in structured EM training programs.

Staff-reported barriers and facilitators to the implementation of healthcare interventions within regional and rural areas: a rapid review.

Background: Individuals in rural areas consistently demonstrate higher mortality and morbidity rates, and poorer access to healthcare, compared to their metropolitan counterparts. Optimizing the implementation of evidence-based interventions can reduce these inequities. Existing literature outlines numerous barriers and facilitators to the implementation of healthcare interventions, but these are generally not specific to rural areas.

Establishment of a Research Unit in Colac, a Medium Rural Town: An Update on Progress and Guidance for Rural Health Service Research Strategy Development.

Background: Rural health services have not had the same opporunities for research as metropolitan health services. Despite increasing awareness of the importance of placed-based research led by rural health services, there are few examples in the literature on how this can be done.

Aims: In this AJRH Practice Insight we aim to provide an update on the establishment and progress of the Colac Area Health (CAH) research unit.

Influence of a rural Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship on medical graduates' geographic and specialty decisions: a constructivist grounded theory study.

Background: Like many countries, Australia is suffering from a longstanding and persistent medical workforce maldistribution with fewer doctors per capita in rural locations and a trend towards sub-specialisation. Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LIC), a medical education model, are more likely than other clerkship models to produce graduates who work rurally, in communities of increasing remoteness and in primary care. While this quantitative data is essential, there has been a dearth of program-specific evidence explaining this phenomenon.

Decentralised clinical trials in rural Australia: Opportunities and challenges.

Aims: To present opportunities and a model to redress the under-representation of rural communities and people in Australian clinical trials.

Context: Clinical trials are essential for building and understanding the health evidence base. The lack of representation of rural people in clinical trials is evident in other countries.

Application of the Australian Bureau of Statistics Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas in cardiovascular disease research: a scoping review identifying implications for research.

Objective To scope how the Australian Bureau of Statistics Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) has been applied to measure socio-economic status (SES) in peer-reviewed cardiovascular disease (CVD) research. Methods The Joanna Briggs Institute's scoping review methodology was used. Results The search retrieved 2788 unique citations, and 49 studies were included.

Models and approaches for building knowledge translation capacity and capability in health services: a scoping review.

Background: Building healthcare service and health professionals' capacity and capability to rapidly translate research evidence into health practice is critical to the effectiveness and sustainability of healthcare systems. This review scoped the literature describing programmes to build knowledge translation capacity and capability in health professionals and healthcare services, and the evidence supporting these.

Methods: This scoping review was undertaken using the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology.

Health economics in nursing research: what you need to know to include economic evaluation methodology in your research.

Due to limited resources and constant, ever-changing healthcare challenges, health economics is essential to support healthcare decisions while improving health outcomes. Economic evaluation methodology facilitates informed decision-making related to the efficient allocation of resources while positively impacting clinical practice. In this paper, we provide an overview of economic evaluation methods and a real-world example applying one method of economic evaluation (cost-utility analysis) in nursing research.

An underutilised resource: The evolving role of clinical nurses contributing to rural health research.

Aim: We aim to discuss the advantages of supporting clinical nurses' involvement in place-based research in rural health services.

Context: Australian health services are currently struggling with increased demand in services from an aging population, chronic diseases and nursing workforce shortages. This impact is amplified in rural and remote regions of Australia.

Responsiveness of a rural Aboriginal community controlled health organisation: A qualitative study.

Introduction: Responsiveness of health care systems is a global concept defined as the ability of systems to function in a manner that meets the expectations of individuals, and is under-studied. In Australia, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) are valued by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples for the provision of holistic culturally safe primary health care and are well positioned to be responsive to community needs.

Objective: To develop a conceptual framework examining the responsiveness of a rural ACCHO to the health care needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in their service region.

A scoping review of the barriers and facilitators to accessing and utilising mental health services across regional, rural, and remote Australia.

Background: Inadequate healthcare access and utilisation are implicated in the mental health burden experienced by those living in regional, rural, and remote Australia. Facilitators that better enable access and utilisation are also reported in the literature. To date, a synthesis on both the barriers and facilitators to accessing and utilising mental health services within the rural Australian context has not been undertaken.

Quality appraisal of spatial epidemiology and health geography research: A scoping review of systematic reviews.

A scoping review of peer-reviewed literature was conducted to understand how systematic reviews assess the methodological quality of spatial epidemiology and health geography research. Fifty-nine eligible reviews were identified and included. Variations in the use of quality appraisal tools were found.

Spatial methods for measuring access to health care.

Access to health care is a universal human right and key indicator of health system performance. Spatial access encompasses geographic factors mediating with the accessibility and availability of health services. Equity of health service access is a global issue, which includes access to the specialized nursing workforce.

Implementation of telehealth primary health care services in a rural Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Organisation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a mixed-methods study.

Introduction: Globally, primary care organisations responded rapidly to COVID-19 physical distancing requirements through the adoption of telehealth to maintain the delivery of health care to communities. In Australia, temporary Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) telehealth items were introduced in March 2020 to enable the provision of telehealth services in the primary care setting. These changes included funding for two modes of telehealth delivery: videoconferencing and telephone consultations.

The application of spatial measures to analyse health service accessibility in Australia: a systematic review and recommendations for future practice.

Background: Australia's inequitable distribution of health services is well documented. Spatial access relates to the geographic limitations affecting the availability and accessibility of healthcare practitioners and services. Issues associated with spatial access are often influenced by Australia's vast landmass, challenging environments, uneven population concentration, and sparsely distributed populations in rural and remote areas.

Exploring the barriers and facilitators to accessing and utilising mental health services in regional, rural, and remote Australia: A scoping review protocol.

Introduction: Australians from regional, rural, and remote areas face diverse and complex challenges in accessing and utilising mental health services. Previous research has pointed to a range of individual, community, structural, and systemic barriers at play, however, limited literature has synthesised the knowledge on this topic. Parallel to this, information on the facilitators to accessing and utilising mental health services for this group is not well documented.