Table 5 Definitions of ‘rural’ as the actual/preferred work locations of Asia-Pacific LMICs doctors and medical students
From: Factors associated with increasing rural doctor supply in Asia-Pacific LMICs: a scoping review
| Definition of rural | Method | Total (%) | Examples of definition | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantitative | Qualitative | Others | |||
| No definition | 18 | 6 | 4 | 28 (39.4) | The articles either: (1) had no definition of rural or no description of the place characteristics where the study was done and this was not cross-referenced to an earlier study by the authors [66, 68, 69, 74,75,76, 78, 81, 92], or; (2) relied on respondents’ own definition of rural [33,34,35, 37, 39, 40, 43,44,45, 54, 55, 73, 79, 80, 88, 89, 93, 94, 98] |
| Facility-related | |||||
| Type of health facility | 9 | 1 | 0 | 10 (14.1) | Township-village health center [47, 95], county or township hospital [61], community or primary or additional primary health centers, secondary hospital [67], community hospital [31, 49], government rural health unit [63, 64] |
| Non-facility related | |||||
| Population size | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 (2.8) | City/municipality with less than 100,000 population [65], district with < 25,000 population [42] |
| Non-metropolitan | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 (8.5) | Area outside the country capital and/or large city [26,27,28,29, 48, 82] |
| Administrative unit | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 (4.2) | Any area of county, town or village [36]; rural or farther rural [84]; township or rural county [77] |
| One of the most rural regions in a country | 2 | 4 | 4 | 10 (14.1) | Rural relative to other areas in the country, such as: Kampong Chhnang in Cambodia, Guangxi in China [32]; Bac Giang, Lao Cai and Thai Binh in Vietnam [32, 70]; Chattisgarh and Odisha in India [53, 57, 86, 91], East Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia and Zamboanga in the Philippines [32, 51, 53, 57, 62, 70, 86, 90] |
| Access and/or topography | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 (7.0) | Limited connection to other areas [56], access for transportation [50, 58], mountainous topography, presence of tribal population [52, 83] |
| Combination of facility and location related | |||||
| Type of facility and other characteristics | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 (4.2) | Working in all district and commune-level facilities located outside the country capital [30, 46], area with low population density and poor health facility [59] |
| Assigned as areas or facilities of doctor shortages | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 (5.6) | Rural posts refer to positions either in selected health facilities or specified areas experiencing doctor shortage [37, 60, 85, 87] |