Rural Amenity and Medical Workforce Shortage: Is there a Relationship?

Abstract

Rural Australia continues to experience a chronic medical workforce shortage. For a variety of reasons, recruiting to and retaining medical professionals in many rural communities remain difficult. A place's amenity is often cited as a significant contributing factor towards the differential attractiveness of different rural and remote practice locations for doctors. This study investigates the extent to which there is an association between medical workforce shortage across rural Australia and a selection of place characteristics descriptive of their isolation, climate, and overall rural amenity. Our main outcome measure, District of Workforce Shortage (DWS) designation, has been employed f..