Physician redistribution: a worldwide medical problem.

Abstract

The Rural Physician Associate Program may be the only undergraduate medical education programme in the world that has been able to successfully redistribute family physicians into geographically isolated areas where there are serious shortages of doctors. A number of factors are essential to this success of the scheme: absolute moral and economic support from the people and their elected leaders; a willingness of medical school faculty to give academic and clinical support to an ongoing, long-term effort with undergraduate medical students and practising family physicians; the free volunteering by rural practising physicians to make the commitment to teach the medical students for over nine months and to pay these students up to +5000; the emphasis of the programme to be placed on the importance of using a biopsychosocial-sexual model in creative problem solving; audiovisual taping, behavioural medicine seminars and family therapy sessions are additional curriculum tools in helping students and physicians care for people with somatic complaints; the student's spouse and children to be included in the professional conditioning experience; there is no legal commitment for the student and family to return to rural Minnesota after the programme.