Exploring preference for, and uptake of, rural medical internships, a key issue for supporting rural training pathways
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(2020) 20:930
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Exploring preference for, and uptake of, rural medical internships, a key issue for supporting rural training pathways Matthew R. McGrail1* , Belinda G. O’Sullivan2,3, Deborah J. Russell4 and Muntasirur Rahman3ˆ
Abstract Background: Improved medical care access for rural populations continues to be a major concern. There remains little published evidence about postgraduate rural pathways of junior doctors, which may have strong implications for a long-term skilled rural workforce. This exploratory study describes and compares preferences for, and uptake of, rural internships by new domestic and international graduates of Victorian medical schools during a period of rural internship position expansion. Methods: We used administrative data of all new Victorian medical graduates’ location preference and accepted location of internship positions for 2013–16. Associations between preferred internship location and accepted internship position were explored including by rurality and year. Moreover, data were stratified between ‘domestic graduates’ (Australian and New Zealand citizens or permanent residents) and ‘international graduates’ (temporary residents who graduated from an Australian university). Results: Across 2013–16, there were 4562 applicants who filled 3130 internship positions (46% oversubscribed). Domestic graduates filled most (69.7%, 457/656) rural internship positions, but significantly less than metropolitan positions (92.2%, p < 0.001). Only 20.1% (551/2737) included a rural location in their top five preferences, less than for international graduates (34.4%, p < 0.001). A greater proportion of rural compared with metropolitan interns accepted a position not in their top five preferences (36.1% versus 7.4%, p < 0.001). The proportion nominating a rural location in their preference list increased across 2013–2016. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] ˆOur co-author, Muntasirur, was deceased in February 2019. At this time he had completed all initial data analyses for the project (Matthew has since validated all results). Muntasirur had also led the original drafting of the paper. He was a significant contributor to this paper but has not approved the final version 1 Rural Clinical School, The University of Queensland, Cnr Cambridge & Canning Street, Rockhampton, Queensland 4700, Australia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included
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