Rural and Remote Health (rrh) has published a new joint position paper on rural surgery and operative delivery.
Over the past 25 years, the attrition of small volume rural surgery programs across Western Canada has been significant and sustained. The ‘Joint position paper on rural surgery and operative delivery’ (JPP), authored by Stuart Iglesias MD, Enhanced Surgical Skills, and lead author, Jude Kornelsen PhD, Co-Director, Centre for Rural Health Research, offers a consensus policy framework for the sustainability of rural surgical programs by nesting them within larger regional programs.
The paper’s recommendations are centered around the recognition that surgical care should be provided as close to home as possible.
The paper’s recommendations are centered around the recognition that surgical care should be provided as close to home as possible. To achieve this, surgical care should be delivered within rural and regional surgical programs integrated into well-functioning networks staffed by generalist specialist surgeons trained across surgical disciplines and family physicians with enhanced surgical skills.