The journal Family Medicine recently noted their 10 most-read papers for 2023. The Department of Family Medicine authored five of them, and all are focused on rural residency training. Three were Rural PREP papers, one WWAMI RHRC paper, and one FMRN paper.
This collection shows the UW continues to be in the forefront at a national level in making sure that rural communities can build a workforce with family physicians.
Please see the synopsis below and the citations to the individual papers.
Value, quality, & importance of rural residency training
- Rural residency graduates show several positive measures of preparedness (e.g., hospital care). Later-career rural physicians report a wider scope of practice compared to later-career urban physicians.
- Family medicine residency training in rural obstetrics (OB) is critical to ensuring that rural communities can continue to deliver babies and for health equity. Most rural residency programs train residents to provide comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care. However, this training is threatened: almost half of programs listed competition with other OB provider” and shortage of family medicine faculty providing OB care as major challenges.
- While the smallest rural family medicine residencies show lower levels of student recruitment, no other characteristics predicted recruitment success. Five measures of program quality and value had no associations with match rates, and thus perceptions that conflate program quality with recruitment success are incorrect. Understanding the intricacies of rural residency inputs and outcomes is key to addressing rural workforce gaps.
- Another study of resident recruitment examined the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP), a secondary recruitment phase for students who do not receive one of their first choices for residency. Rural programs are more likely to place residents via SOAP than nonrural programs. This study found that the vast majority of residents recruited to residency through SOAP are well prepared for training, contribute to their programs, and perform as well as other residents.
- In a study of rural and urban residency graduate performance, there were small differences in measures of academic performance between rural- and urban-trained family residents. The implications of these findings regarding the quality of rural programs are unclear and warrant further study.
Pollack SW, Andrilla CHA, Peterson L, Morgan ZJ, Longenecker R, Schmitz D, Evans DV, Patterson DG. Rural Versus Urban Family Medicine Residency Scope of Training and Practice. Fam Med. 2023;55(3):162-170. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2023.807915.
Fredrickson E, Evans DV, Woolcock S, Andrilla CHA, Garberson LA, Patterson DG. Understanding and Overcoming Barriers to Rural Obstetric Training for Family Physicians. Fam Med. 2023;55(6):381-388. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2023.128141.
Longenecker R, Oster NV, Peterson L, Andrilla CHA, Schmitz DF, Evans DV, Morgan ZJ, Pollack SW, Patterson DG. A Match Made in Rural: Interpreting Match Rates and Exploring Best Practices. Fam Med. 2023;55(7):426-432. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2023.106345.
Peterson L, Morgan ZJ, Andrilla CHA, Pollack SW, Longenecker R, Schmitz D, Patterson DG. Academic Achievement and Competency in Rural and Urban Family Medicine Residents. Fam Med. 2023;55(3):152-161. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2023.656489.
Chen F, Weidner A, Ormsby M, Maier R. Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program Outcomes in a Family Medicine Residency Network. Fam Med. 2023;55(2):75-80. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2022.826652.