Abstract
BackgroundAlthough interprofessional practice (IPP) offers the potential to enhance rural health services and provide support to rural clinicians, IPP may itself be problematic due to workforce limitations and service fragmentation. Differing socioeconomic and geographic characteristics of rural communities means that the way that IPP occurs in rural contexts will necessarily differ from that occurring in metropolitan contexts. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors contributing to effective IPP in rural contexts, to examine how IPP happens and to identify barriers and enablers.MethodsUsing Realistic Evaluation as a framework, semi-structured interviews were conducted with health professionals in a range of rural healthcare contexts in NSW, Australia. Independent thematic analysis was undertaken by individual research team members, which was then integrated through consensus to achieve a qualitative description of rural IPP practice.ResultsThere was clear evidence of diversity and complexity associated with IPP in the rural settings that was supported by descriptions of collaborative integrated practice. There were instances where IPP doesn’t and could happen. There were a number of characteristics identified that significantly impacted on IPP including the presence of a shared philosophical position and valuing of IPP and recognition of the benefits, funding to support IPP, pivotal roles, proximity and workforce resources.ConclusionsThe nature of IPP in rural contexts is diverse and determined by a number of critical factors. This study goes some of the way towards unravelling the complexity of IPP in rural contexts, highlighting the strong motivating factors that drive IPP. However, it has also identified significant structural and relational barriers related to workload, workforce, entrenched hierarchies and ways of working and service fragmentation. Further research is required to explicate the mechanisms that drive successful IPP across a range of diverse rural contexts in order to inform the implementation of robust flexible strategies that will support sustainable models of rural IPP.
Highlights
Interprofessional practice (IPP) offers the potential to enhance rural health services and provide support to rural clinicians, interprofessional practice (IPP) may itself be problematic due to workforce limitations and service fragmentation
Approximately half the global population lives in rural areas [1] where residents have higher rates of chronic disease, injury and early death compared with people living in metropolitan areas [2]
Rural health practice is distinguished by more generalist approaches to healthcare and service models which differ from those found in metropolitan centres [4]
Summary
Interprofessional practice (IPP) offers the potential to enhance rural health services and provide support to rural clinicians, IPP may itself be problematic due to workforce limitations and service fragmentation. There are major health workforce shortages in rural areas along with poor access for rural residents to a range of health-care services [3]. The health workforce shortage in rural areas has farreaching implications for how health workers practise with major differences in work practice and scope between metropolitan and rural clinicians. Metropolitan practice is generally more specialised with a diverse and large workforce with defined discipline boundaries and scope within with a wider range of services, and resources than is available to rural practice [8]
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