Healthcare Professionals Seek Social Connections When Moving to Rural Towns

When choosing rural locations in which to practice, healthcare professionals most often cite social factors such as the friendliness of the town, according to a survey administered by researchers at USDA, Economic Research Service and Iowa State University. Similar factors come into play when they decide to stay in their rural small towns, the survey showed. More than 900 physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives, and dentists responded to the survey, conducted in 2014 and 2015. They lived in 150 rural small towns in Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin. For rural communities to attract and retain healthcare professionals, researchers found that factors in decisions to locate and stay in rural small towns usually included the following: personal and professional relationships (known as social capital), people-related resources such as education, skills, and health (human capital), and physical capital such as the town’s infrastructure and medical facilities.