Place
Living and Work Environment
Promising Practice - Stay (retention) interviews (Personal & Professional Support)
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Further information for managers:
Stay interviews: Your key to retaining top performers
21 Best Stay Interview Questions to Ask
21 Best Stay Interview Questions to Ask
Does it work?
Stay interviews or retention interviews have grown in popularity recently. It has been commonplace to conduct Exit Interviews
Under investigation
Under investigation
Unsubstatiated - please contact us if you have evidence of this as a successful intervention.
Unsubstatiated - please contact us if you have evidence of this as a successful intervention.
Culture Amp website, includes example questions and a process for implementing Stay Interviews https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/stay-interviews
Academy to Innovate HR, includes a description of how to conduct a Stay Interview and example questions https://www.aihr.com/blog/stay-interview-questions/
Australian Human Resource Institute website includes a description of how to conduct a stay Interview, example questions and AHRI members can access a 'Stay Interview' template https://www.hrmonline.com.au/nce-2023/7-questions-stay-interview-retain-employees/
Promising Practice - personalised orientation program.
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
A personalised orientation program for new resident nurses was developed, implemented, and evaluated by a health service in rural USA.
Keahey, S. (2008). Against the Odds: Orienting and Retaining Rural Nurses. Journal for nurses in staff development, 24(2).
Keahey, S. (2008). Against the Odds: Orienting and Retaining Rural Nurses. Journal for nurses in staff development, 24(2).
The personalised orientation program was considered effective because 80% of participants were still employed by the organisation two years later.
Keahey, S. (2008). Against the Odds: Orienting and Retaining Rural Nurses. Journal for nurses in staff development, 24(2).
Promising Practice - previous exposure to a rural environment during clinical training.
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
This includes rural medical schools, rural nursing programs, and other health profession programs where students are training in a rural setting to improve the likelihood that they will practices in a rural or remote environment.
Peña, S., Ramirez, J., Becerra, C., Carabantes, J., & Arteaga, O. (2010). The Chilean Rural Practitioner Programme: a multidimensional strategy to attract and retain doctors in rural areas. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 88(5), 371-378.
Van Dormael, M., Dugas, S., Kone, Y., Coulibaly, S., Sy, M., Marchal, B., & Desplats, D. (2008). Appropriate training and retention of community doctors in rural areas: a case study from Mali. Human Resources for Health, 6(1), 1-8.
Under investigation
Under investigation
Promising Practice - Incentives to improve workforce numbers (and therefore access to services)
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
This promising practice suggests that offering financial incentives to health professionals to attract them to rural and remote areas, that are also sufficient for them to remain, will improve access to health services.
Swami, M., & Scott, A. (2021). Impact of rural workforce incentives on access to GP services in underserved areas: Evidence from a natural experiment. Social Science & Medicine (1982), 281, 114045.
Swami, M., & Scott, A. (2021). Impact of rural workforce incentives on access to GP services in underserved areas: Evidence from a natural experiment. Social Science & Medicine (1982), 281, 114045-114045.
Swarmi and Scott (2021) found the the financial incentives increased the number of GPs in their study but whether this improved retention is unknown. They found evidence that the increased workforce numbers improved access to GPs for their current clients, but only weak evidence that it impacted the waiting times for new clients.
Coming soon
Promising Practice - Allowances
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
Introducing an allowance to improve retention of health professionals in rural areas. Allowances may be at an industry level or at an organisational level.
Reid, S. (2004). “Monitoring the effect of the new rural allowance for health professionals”. Durban: Health Systems Trust. (industry-level allowance)
Goma, F.M., Tomblin Murphy, G., MacKenzie, A., Libetwa, M., Nzala, S.H., Mbwili-Muleya, C., Rigby, J., & Gough, A. (2014). Evaluation of recruitment and retention strategies for health workers in rural Zambia. Human resources for health, 12(1), S1-S1. (organisational-level)
Reid, S. (2004). “Monitoring the effect of the new rural allowance for health professionals”. Durban: Health Systems Trust. (industry-level allowance)
Goma, F.M., Tomblin Murphy, G., MacKenzie, A., Libetwa, M., Nzala, S.H., Mbwili-Muleya, C., Rigby, J., & Gough, A. (2014). Evaluation of recruitment and retention strategies for health workers in rural Zambia. Human resources for health, 12(1), S1-S1. (organisational-level)
Reid (2004) found that the rural incentives were effective in the short-term with approximately one third of health workers changing their short-term career plans to work in rural areas due to the incentives being offered.
Goma et al. (2014) found that while the allowance was effective in improving retention, age, gender, and the location of the work were more influential in improving retention than the incentives.
Coming soon
Promising Practice - Personal support
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
Personal supports for rural and remote health professionals include good living conditions, suitable housing, access to training and education, coaching/mentoring, support for partners (e.g. assistance to find work in the local area), social support networks.
Onnis, L. (2019) Transitioning from remote clinician to manager: why do some managers thrive, yet others barely survive? Report. Cairns, Australia.
Under investigation
Onnis (2019) piloted a mentoring intervention with remote health managers which showed promise for improving workforce sustainability but it was a pilot with small numbers and the evaluation was not suffient to determine the effectiveness of the mentoring intervention.
Under investigation
Connection to Place
Promising Practice - Place-based Governance
About the promising practice:
Evidence of implementation:
Evidence of evaluation:
Does it work?
Further information for managers:
Place-based governance describes interventions where the local community are part of the strategy to improve retention. This includes welcoming the new health professional(s) and their family, and providing broad supports to new health professionals (e.g. housing, work for partners, etc.).
Gillespie, J., Cosgrave, C., & Malatzky, C. (2022). Making the case for place based governance in rural health workforce recruitment and retention: Lessons from Canada and Australia. Social sciences & humanities open, 6(1), 100356.
Gillespie, J., Cosgrave, C., & Malatzky, C. (2022). Making the case for place based governance in rural health workforce recruitment and retention: Lessons from Canada and Australia. Social sciences & humanities open, 6(1), 100356.
Gillespie et al. (2022) found that a community-led strategy was successful in improving retention in the medium to long term.
Mallacoota’s Community Health Infrastructure and Resilience Fund (CHIRF) webpage
The CHIRF are documenting their experience so that that their lessons will be helpful for other geographically remote communities wanting to strengthen local primary health care services. An evaluation is being conducted with support from a philanthropic grant (Gillespie et al., 2022) https://www.chirf.org.au/doctor-search/
Community Connector Program - led by Dr Cath Cosgrave this website contains information about programs and strategy that aim to improve how rural and remote health service organisations attract, recruit and retain health professionals by working closely with the community to find sustainable solutions. https://cathcosgrave.com/
CHECKLIST for assessing your community’s fitness for implementing the Attract Connect Stay solution
Attract. Connect. Stay. have a checklist to assess your readiness for for a place-based governance intervention. https://attractconnectstay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Ready_Checklist-7.pdf