title: Attitudes of senior medical students from two Australian schools towards rural training and practice.
abstract: Australia, like many other countries, continues to face a perennial shortage of doctors in rural areas. This 1988 study of final-year medical students at the two universities in Victoria, Australia, sought to assess their attitudes towards the choice of location for postgraduate training as well as ultimate practice location. The authors gave a cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire to 360 students; 314 (87%) responded. The majority of the students expressed a desire to do their internships and postgraduate training in a metropolitan hospital. To identify the students' attitudes that might have influenced their choices, factor analysis was carried out. The "education and training" factor accounted for the highest percentage of the variance observed. As in most other similar studies, a strong relationship was observed between a student's rural background and the student's subsequent intention to train and work in a rural area.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Monash University, East Bentleigh, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Silagy
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Piterman
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D012423:Rural Health; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014739:Victoria