This study augments previous work showing that any prior rural background is a significant predictor of rural work. Rural practitioners of both urban and rural origin who undertake voluntary rural placements are more likely to enter rural practice and consequently mandatory placements may not be helpful to increasing the rural workforce. The quality of a placement is a highly significant factor associated with future workplace choice, the details of which need to be further investigated.

People caring for palliative patients at home identify respite care as a key need. However, caregiver concern over the skill level of respite care providers has been cited as a common barrier to uptake and satisfaction with respite services. This study implemented and evaluated an at-home palliative care respite service delivered by enrolled nurses, known by various names in the UK. It was found that the program reduced hospitalizations of palliative patients by 80% and potentially increased the likelihood that they would die at home.

Education plays a key role in recruitment of health workforce to rural and remote locations. In Australia, Schools of Nursing have set up a variety of educational programmes to encourage rural workforce choices. These programmes include rural campuses and short-term rural placement programmes out of urban campuses. This study compares the relative workforce impacts of rural campus versus short-term rural placements out of urban campus. The single outcome measure - rural or urban location after graduation - showed that the rural school graduated a significantly higher proportion of rural-working graduates (chi(2) 4.46, p = 0.04). However there was no difference in the rural workforce choices of students from rural backgrounds, irrespective of their university location (chi(2) = 1.45, p = 0.23). We conclude that both rural universities and affirmative action for selecting rural students into nursing programmes are effective workforce strategies, but that rural campuses have the added benefit of encouraging under-represented rural students to access university education.