Social network analysis of rural medical networks after medical school immersion in a rural clinical school

Denese E Playford,David Atkinson,Tessa Burkitt

doi:10.1186/s12913-019-4132-z

Abstract

BackgroundThe impact of new medical graduates on the social dimensions of the rural medical workforce is yet to be examined. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is able to visualize and measure these dimensions. We apply this method to examine the workforce characteristics of graduates from a representative Australian Rural Clinical School.MethodsParticipants were medical graduates of the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA) from the 2001–2014 cohorts, identified as being in rural work in 2017 by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. SNA was used to examine the relationships between site of origin and of work destination. Data were entered into UCInet 6 as tied pairs, and visualized using Netdraw. UCINet statistics relating to node centrality were obtained from the node editor.ResultsSNA measures showed that the 124 of 709 graduates in rural practice were distributed around Australia, and that their practice was strongly focused on the North, with a clear centre in the remote Western Australian town of Broome. Women were strongly recruited, and were widely distributed.ConclusionsRCSWA appears to be a “weak tie” according to SNA theory: the School attracts graduates to rural nodes where they had only passing prior contact. The multiple activities that comprise the social capital of the most attractive, remote, node demonstrate the clear workforce effects of being a “bridge, broker and boundary spanner” in SNA terms, and add new understanding about recruiting to the rural workforce.

Highlights

The impact of new medical graduates on the social dimensions of the rural medical workforce is yet to be examined
We assume that the results we report are the consequence of new relationships that developed in the year spent rurally, because the towns represented here have relatively small contributions of medical students to Western Australian medical programmes overall, and so supply little in the way of a priori relationships for alumni [26]
The fact that graduate’s movements in this study reflected a similar network pattern – including northern towns outside of Western Australia which are not involved in teaching for the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA) year - suggests that the graduate ties we report are socially responsive

Summary

Introduction

The impact of new medical graduates on the social dimensions of the rural medical workforce is yet to be examined. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is able to visualize and measure these dimensions We apply this method to examine the workforce characteristics of graduates from a representative Australian Rural Clinical School. Are there disproportionate number of RCS graduates entering rural work in The impact of these new graduates on the social dimensions of the rural medical workforce has not been examined. We propose that the geographical re-distribution of RCS alumni is establishing new workforce networks in rural Australia. We examine this hypothesis using Social Network

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion