That was then: a review of the rural family medicine training programs in Alberta at ten years

Dr Douglas Myhre, University of Calgary, Canada*

Background: Rural Alberta South, affiliated with the University of Calgary, and Rural Alberta North, affiliated with the University of Alberta, were established as teaching units in July 2001. Using four regional communities and numerous smaller rural towns, residents complete the CFPC accredited family medicine residency in two years. At ten years, a review of the global results of the program was undertaken.

Methods: Data on the graduates was collected from varied sources including exit interviews and provincial licensing agencies. Data was validated where necessary by personal contact. The information was collated into broad groups for demographic analysis including medical school origin and regional site of training. The intended site of practice as well as the actual site three years after graduation and currently were reviewed. The timing for the site at three years is supported by the literature.

Results: While overall ten-year practice locations were roughly equally divided into thirds for rural, regional and urban sites, this distribution changed significantly over time. The change is most clearly demonstrated by pooling data from the first three years of the programs and compared with the final three years. The early prototype demonstrated rural practice intent of 18% while the most recent prototype reveals that 82% of graduates intend to practice rurally. The percentage intending to continue in third year enhanced skills training decreased from 20 to 8 per cent by the same comparison. It appears that this change is correlated with the changing percentage of International Medical Graduates (IMG) in the programs. Further analysis will be presented.

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