This summer watch for RhPAP in your area – we will be visiting communities that have been successful in attracting and retaining health-care professionals, and asking them to share their secrets of success.
RhPAP, the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Alberta (CPSA) and the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) are collaborating to study communities that have been successful in attracting and retaining health care professionals and understand what makes them successful. Leaning on a ‘positive deviance’ approach7, the goal is to highlight solutions that can help other communities in rural Alberta in successful attraction and retention of physicians and other health care professionals.
We will visit each community to meet with Community Recruitment Consultants (CRCs) and key members of the Attraction & Retention committees. The purpose of the visits will be to get insight into the context and identify key participants for follow-up interviews. Following the site visits, we will conduct in-depth individual or group interviews with key individuals identified during the site visits.
Specifically, we want to find out:
- What makes rural communities successful in attracting and retaining health care professionals?
- What are the essential personal factors of the key stakeholders that enable success?
- What are the community, organizational and public policy factors that make certain communities successful?
The study is cost shared between the sponsor organizations. The results will be used to support our RhPAP’s teaching / coaching work with more than 60 rural communities actively seeking health professions.
For more information on this project, please contact Rebekah Seidel, Director Rural Health Professions Development for RhPAP.