Rural and Remote Health is an open-access international academic journal serving rural and remote communities and publishing articles by rural health practitioners, educators, researchers and policy makers.

Nurses are often on the frontline of disaster management, providing care to patients with physical, mental, and emotional turbulence and acting as educators for disaster prevention. However, the literature suggests that nurses are underprepared to respond to disasters. This study examined the preparedness for disaster response among nurses in rural and urban primary healthcare settings in Tanzania. The results suggest that nurses are poorly prepared for disaster responses, while those in rural settings are at a great disadvantage.

Universal access to health services and universal health coverage are needed to achieve good health for all, yet rural communities face a variety of access barriers. As part of an effort to 'rural proof' health systems, it is therefore imperative to identify and act on the factors limiting access to health services by rural and Indigenous communities. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the wide range of access barriers faced by rural and remote communities and discusses the potential for barrier assessments to contribute evidence for rural proofing of national health policies, strategies, plans and programs.

This research reports on patient and community physician satisfaction with a teleneurology program which provided consultations to 14,241 patients at 12 community-based hospitals between 2014 and 2021. Results show high levels of satisfaction with using tablet technology for teleneurology consultation.

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The general principles of healthcare quality are well articulated internationally, but less has been written about applying these principles to rural contexts. Research exploring patient and provider views of healthcare quality in rural communities is limited. This study investigated what was important in healthcare quality, particularly for hospital-level care, for rural New Zealand communities.

Access to ultrasound imaging services is limited in rural areas and point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has the potential to reduce this gap. This exploratory study assessed how POCUS is utilised by doctors in contemporary Australian rural general practice. Doctors reported limited confidence for certain scans and used POCUS predominantly for obstetric indications. Attention to the barriers to POCUS utilisation is needed to realise the potential benefits for the health of rural communities.

People do not receive regular dental care for several reasons. This may result in tooth loss and other health effects. Dental care may be a bigger challenge in rural settings, where there are several barriers to care. This study used Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data and examined dental visits and tooth loss for US Indigenous American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) adults in rural vs. urban settings. In adjusted analyses, AI/AN adults in rural vs. urban settings had a similar frequency of dental visits in 2020 with 33% higher odds of having missing teeth. The author recommends interventions to maintain teeth in AI/AN adults in rural settings.

Despite policies aimed at universal health coverage by ensuring availability and accessibility of general practitioners (GPs), medically underserved areas (or ‘medical deserts’) are still present in Europe. This systematic review summarizes and compares literature on interventions and their potential effectiveness in GP recruitment and retention in these underserved areas.

Various reactions of the body are activated during stress, including activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal endocrine axis and the autonomous nervous system. This activity can be assessed by the measurement of biological stress marker molecules – salivary α-amylase and cortisol – as well as heart rate, and blood pressure monitoring. This article reports on the stress levels produced by the daily professional routines of rural general practitioners in Bulgaria.

Every year, an estimated 15 million infants are born preterm worldwide. Women residing in rural and remote areas of Australia experience increased rates of adverse perinatal outcomes and are at almost twice the risk of having a preterm infant than women residing in major cities. Mortality and morbidity rates are higher for preterm infants born in non-tertiary centres, thus women are generally transferred to metropolitan tertiary centres to give birth. This study investigates the experiences of women from rural areas who have had a preterm infant admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit.

Australians living in regional and remote communities face several barriers when accessing health care. Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) presents a new challenge for these communities. Western Australia is the second Australian state to implement VAD laws and, to date, is the jurisdiction with the greatest need to address such inequities due to its vast geography. This article identifies and explores initiatives introduced during the law-making and implementation stages of the law reform to address regional and remote access inequities.

Rural generalist anaesthetists (RGAs) are central to the delivery of elective and emergency anaesthesia and the acute care of critically unwell patients in much of rural and remote Australia. Without a well-trained RGA workforce of sufficient numbers, Australia would struggle to provide anaesthetic services outside of urban locations or make viable other crucial healthcare services that are reliant on anaesthetic support such as obstetrics, surgery, emergency medicine and critical care. This paper details a systematic review of the literature specifically asking the question: ‘What is the current evidence of the ‘safety’ of anaesthesia delivered by RGAs?’

Although sex work is not criminalized in Brazil, female sex workers experience prejudice and discrimination. In rural areas, which tend to be poorer regions, female sex workers experience inequities in gender, race, class and, above all, bear marks of struggle and survival. This study reports on the meanings that women, in the experience of paid sexual work living in rural areas, attribute to the quality of life, according to Sartre's phenomenological perspective.