Capability ... what's in a word? Rural Doctors Network of New South Wales Australia is shifting to focus on the capability of rural health professionals.

Capability ... what's in a word? Rural Doctors Network of New South Wales Australia is shifting to focus on the capability of rural health professionals. Rural Remote Health. 2020 Jul;20(3):5633 Authors: Martiniuk AL, Colbran R, Ramsden R, Edwards M, Barrett E, O'Callaghan E, Bullock R, Lowe EFL, Karlson D, Curnow J, Gotch B, Kramer J, Bagnulo S, Rothnie IP, Hardaker L, Turner N, Wotherspoon A, Russell C Abstract Rural health services, and the workforces that provide those services, are under unprecedented pressure due to insufficient health workforce numbers and distribution of health workforce weighted to urban areas. This creates health service access issues in rural areas, compounding existing health inequalities between rural and urban people. Many approaches to date have aimed to rectify these issues, with moderate success. In this article we present a call to action to pursue a complementary approach: supporting the capability of the rural health workforce. We hypothesise that further exploring what it means to be a 'capable' rural health professional and what processes or conditions support or erode capability may additionally bolster efforts toward strong rural and remote health systems. The Capability Approach is a theory proposed by Amartya Sen, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for this work. Although the Capability Approach inspired, for instance, the UN's Human Development Index, it h...
Source: Rural and Remote Health - Category: Rural Health Tags: Rural Remote Health Source Type: research