Table 3 Themes related to sustaining rural health researcha
Theme | Description |
|---|---|
Recognition | Poor recognition by main university campuses and their own units for effort and achievements and the value provided to community |
Workload | Small academic teams researching large problems, high demand to take all opportunities and respond to the community interest in researching and solving rural health issues |
Networks | Working solo, geographically isolated, with few opportunities to connect to rural health researchers in other sites and limited senior academic mentoring from others in the rural health research field |
Funding and strategic grants | Structural barriers to writing grants (nature of field complex makes it hard to confine to a grant topic/simple method, few team members and time for research outputs and grant writing), limited grants target improving health in rural-places |
Organisational culture and leadership | Poor leadership and encouragement of collaboration with other sites affecting cohesive business planning and job satisfaction |
Job security | Ongoing job security insufficient relative to the commitment researchers made to rural places |
Career progression options | Employed and maintained at levels below competence and experience |