Students’ opinions on working in rural practice in Slovenia

Abstract

Background. All over the world, there is a lack of interest for specialty training in family medicine and for work in rural practice. Objectives. The objective of our study was to survey the opinion of medical students of the Maribor Medical Faculty, Slovenia, about rural medicine. Material and methods. This was a qualitative study. A semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions was used. In the period from December 2013 to February 2014, an electronic form was forwarded via e-mail to a stratified sample of 30 students of the Maribor Medical Faculty. Results. 21 students (70%) participated. Students stated several conditions that would make them work in rural practice. Their accounts were summarized as organizational (e.g. work hours, number of patients), infrastructural (e.g. equipment), local (e.g. cost of living) or personal (e.g. employment opportunities for their partner). Students associate rural practice with hard work, where physicians have to rely on their own abilities. Students see rural doctors as versatile personalities, knowledgeable, resourceful, optimistic, hard working and smart, but also as unambitious and elderly. Students connect rural practice with greater responsibility, diverse pathology, less availability of equipment and with less support for diagnostics. 15 (71%) of the surveyed students want more emphasis placed on rural medicine in the undergraduate curriculum and electives. The reasons for accepting a rural scholarship would generally depend on the location for which it was offered and if it was tendered for the desired specialist training. Conclusions. Students should be presented with opportunities for personal and professional development in rural areas during undergraduate programs. Rural scholarship programs need to be strengthened.

South Africa’s rural mental health human resource crisis: a situation analysis and call for innovative task-shifting

“…clinical associates (a mid-level Phc health practitioner), for example, are allowed to prescribe limited psychotropic medications with some legal restrictions, even though they are not specialist trained in Mhc. clinical associates and medical students have also now started to receive practical training in rural and PHC settings [44], an approach advocated as having positive effects on healthcare students' opinions of later working in these settings [45].…”

Factors influencing medical students’ choice of family medicine

“…Furthermore, studies have also revealed the negative aspects of a family doctor's specialty, such as managerial orientation, professional isolation and the need to compile excess documentation, low prestige and intellectual level, as well as the extremely wide, unlimited and general scope [15]. Medical students are scared of the government's pressure, as they seem to try to force newly graduated family doctors to work in remote or rural areas [16,17]. Family physicians are also facing some difficulties, such as overwork, stress and dissatisfaction with medical practice, and they are forced to provide medical care to patients during non-working hours in emergencies [18].…”