The quality of rural procedural medical practice

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/233502

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

This study proposes to examine the quality of procedural medical care provided by rural doctors who are not specialists. The disciplines of Anaesthetics, Surgery and Obstetrics will be included. Most of these services in rural Australia are not provided by specialist medical practitioners, but rather by rural general practitioners who have obtained additional training, albeit shorter than that undertaken by specialist trainees, and who are supported by skilled nurses and other health professionals in relatively small rural hospitals. Patients and rural doctors often have little choice but to manage urgent cases locally and in some cases experienced and skilled local teams are able to offer a wider range of services, including a limited number of elective procedures. Despite underlying assumptions that the quality of the services cannot match that of specialist care in larger hospitals, there is no agreement on what constitutes quality of rural procedural care and little evidence that the quality is different. This issue is important as substantial government funds are spent on recruiting, training and retaining a qualified rural medical workforce, and yet fewer rural doctors are providing these services and fewer rural hospitals have the facilities to support those rural doctors still providing the services. Further, measuring the quality of care is a complex issue on which different stakeholders may have different views. This study proposes a multi-perspective approach to assessing the quality of care through a number of case studies provided by rural doctors.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2003

End Date: 01-01-2004

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $141,425.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Primary Health Care

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

anaesthetic care | consumer and professional perspectives | obstetric care | procedural medical practice | quality indicators | quality of health care | quality of medical care | rural and remote health care | surgical care

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