Conference Abstract

Practical recommendations to attract and retain Allied Health Professionals in rural health settings

Part of Special Series: Abstracts from the 15th National Rural and Remote Allied Health Conference (2024)go to url

AUTHORS

name here
Jane E George
1 DHSc, Rural Health Workforce Consultant and Scholar * ORCID logo

name here
Nicola Kayes
2 PhD, Professor ORCID logo

name here
Peter J Larmer
3 DHSc, Associate Professor and Head ORCID logo

CORRESPONDENCE

*Dr Jane E George

AFFILIATIONS

1 Rural Health Workforce Consultancy, Christchurch, Canterbury 8051, New Zealand

2 Centre for Person Centred Research, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

3 Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1142 , New Zealand

PUBLISHED

5 February 2025 Volume 25 Issue 1

HISTORY

RECEIVED: 26 January 2025

ACCEPTED: 26 January 2025

CITATION

George JE, Kayes N, Larmer PJ.  Practical recommendations to attract and retain Allied Health Professionals in rural health settings. Rural and Remote Health 2025; 25: 9727. https://doi.org/10.22605/RRH9727

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSgo to url

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

go to urlCited by

no pdf available, use your browser's print function to create one


full conference abstract:

Introduction: The recruitment and retention of allied health professionals (AHPs) in rural and remote locations is a worldwide challenge. However, there has been limited investment in strategies specific to AHPs compared with their medicine and nursing counterparts. This is in part due to an absence of research seeking to understand the unique challenges and opportunities that exist for the allied health rural workforce that can underpin strategies and actions. To address this gap, we have recently undertaken research to discover what AHPs identify as the attractive aspects of living and working rurally.

Methods: An interpretive descriptive methodology1 was utilised to develop practical, actionable recommendations to support line managers, recruiters, employing organisations, tertiary providers, professional associations and registering bodies as they work to better resource rural health systems. Ethics approval was obtained via Auckland University of Technology: reference number 18/424

Results: This e-poster offers 20 recommendations built from the narratives of rural AHPs and foreground by the recent COVID and Health System Reform context in Aotearoa. These recommendations link to the themes that were developed from the data; Connection and Belonging, Safe and Supported Practice, Creating Roles People What to Come For, and the interweaving theme of Fit.

Table 1. Recommendations

Themes and Subthemes Recommendation Audience

Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Fit

Networking and knowing your community
Become a resource about your communities for your people
Line Managers

Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Safe & Supported Practice: Relationship with Leader(ship)

Finding balance, and role modelling boundaries
Creating micro-moments that build a sense of safety and belonging
Lean into flexibility and transparency instead of consistency and equality of rule application
Support skills building for navigating work and personal community relationships
Line Managers
Safe & Supported Practice: Relationship with Leader(ship)
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About

Time spent walking in their shoes
Make a regular practice of spending time in the remote environments where your workforce is based

Line Managers

Creating Roles People Want to Come For: Freedom & Scope
Safe & Supported Practice: Relationship with Leader(ship)
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About

Building trust benefits everyone
Assume good intent from the outset
Promote reciprocal relationships (tuakana-teina)
Line Managers
Safe & Supported Practice: Relationship with Leader(ship)
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles People Want to Come For: Growth Pathways AND Freedom & Scope
Enhancing management and leadership attributes
Invest in ongoing leadership development
Line Managers
Fit The Reasonableness Test
Check for biases and other habits of thinking
Line Managers
Safe & Supported Practice: Valuing Learning Apportioning resource
Matching investment to each of the workforces equitably and with population benefits in mind
Line Managers
Safe & Supported Practice: Valuing Learning Demonstrating AHPs' learning needs are valued
Create, brand, and promote learning with each workforce in mind
Organisations
Safe & Supported Practice: Valuing Learning
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles People Want to Come For: Growth Pathways
Fit for purpose policies and procedures
Visible, transparent, accessible, and fair
Organisations
Safe & Supported Practice: Relationship with Leader(ship)
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About

Are you an ally for rural and remote AHPs?
How you represent your rural colleagues and services to others matters

Organisations
Connection & Belonging
Safe & Supported Practice
Who is missing from this process?
Assumptions limit progress, and affect quality
Organisations
Fit Are they safe?
aka The Reasonableness Test (see above)
Organisations
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About The human impact
Impacts on identity, and wellbeing
Organisations

Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles people want to come for: Recruitment Experiences
Fit

A window into the culture of an organisation
Treat every candidate as though they will solve all of the organisation's recruitment needs
Recruiters
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles people want to come for: Recruitment Experiences
Knowing your audience
Learn about all the professions who come under the Allied Health, Scientific & Technical umbrella; what they do, who they are, what matters to them
Recruiters
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles People Want to Come For: Recruitment Experiences
Connection & Belonging: Personal Relationships
Creating opportunities to connect
Line up start dates for multiple new hires
Recruiters
Creating Roles people want to come for: Lifespan of Roles Identifying patterns
Collect, analyse, and make visible workforce data in meaningful ways
Recruiters
Connection & Belonging: Feeling Cared About
Creating Roles people want to come for: Growth Pathways AND Freedom and Scope
Recognise and Endorse a Rural Scope of Practice
Establish mechanisms to recognise rural practice as an extended/specialist scope of practice and a pathway for endorsement
Professional Associations and Regulatory Authorities
Creating Roles people want to come for: Growth Pathways Is city-based training the only way?
Develop ways to connect knowledge, skills and qualifications with learners who are rurally located
Tertiary Education Providers
Safe & Supported Practice: Valuing Learning Rural Generalism
Develop rural generalist pathways for individual professions and transdisciplinary
Tertiary Education Providers

Tuakana-teina is a concept from te ao Māori and refers to the relationship between an older (tuakana) person and a younger (teina) person. Within teaching and learning contexts, this can take a variety of forms such as peer to peer, younger to older, older to younger, or able/expert to less able/expert and is a reciprocal learning relationship2.

Discussion: These recommendations demonstrate a multi-faceted approach is required to secure the workforce already in place, attract new staff and build the workforce of the future, enabling rural people to grow up well, live well and age well in rural spaces.

references:

1 Thorne S. Interpretive description: qualitative research for applied practice. New York, USA: Routledge, 2016.
2 Te Kete Ipurangi. The concept of a tuakana–teina relationship. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 2023. Available: web link
This PDF has been produced for your convenience. Always refer to the live site https://www.rrh.org.au/journal/article/9727 for the Version of Record.