Training for rural family medicine: a cooperative venture of government, university, and community in Alberta.

Training, recruiting, and retaining family physicians in rural areas are issues that have attracted the attention of governments, university training programs, medical governing bodies, and rural communities. In this article, the authors describe a cooperative venture between government, university, and community in the province of Alberta to train medical students and residents in rural areas. The Rural Physician Action Plan (RPAP) was developed in the early 1990s to improve the recruitment and retention of physicians in rural areas. The RPAP is coordinated by a committee composed of representatives of the Alberta government, the Alberta Medical Association, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and the faculties of Medicine at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. Residents in the University of Alberta Department of Family Medicine are required to do 20 weeks of blocktime training in a community practice, and under the auspices of the RPAP rural training sites were identified and rural rotations developed. Faculty development activities were developed for the community physicians who would host the residents. The RPAP funds 24 third-year residency positions, equally divided between the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta. Beginning in 1994, undergraduate medical students at the University of Alberta were required to complete a four-week family medicine rotation, with a majority of students being posted to rural training sites. The extent to which the RPAP has helped to recruit and retain physicians in rural areas is not clear. The provincial Ministry of Health evaluated the RPAP in 1995 and concluded that, at a minimum, without the RPAP the province would have suffered a net loss of rural physicians. The communities have been very accepting and supportive of the students and residents.