The Australian Federation of Medical Women (AFMW) is particularly interested in increasing its relevance and support to regional, rural and remote female medical practitioners. It has been an ongoing problem of our state based organisations to encompass these valuable medical practitioners as the organisations traditionally focus around social networks in metropolitan areas.

AFMW has investigated the issues facing regional, rural and remote women practitioners and it has been found that while these medical women face different issues to their metropolitan counterparts, there were common themes relevant to both groups.

Networking

Rural practitioners crave social support and a chance to debrief with other colleagues, as they are not able to network with colleagues on a regular basis. A national female rural GP network would act as a vehicle for support and debriefing and also mentoring and information for interested practitioners and students.

Personal Safety

Females in rural communities encounter issues with personal safety - house calls to new clients out of town become a balance between delivery of service and personal risk.

Child Care

Rural practitioners generally have more on-call time and need child care facilities available almost 24hrs a day. Access to child care in the rural setting is a barrier for females to rural practice: practitioners are separated from their extended families and have difficulties keeping their family issues separate from the residents of the community.

Maternity Leave

Leave when having a family is almost an impossibility in rural practice. This often hinders the retention of female GPs during their child bearing years.

Training

Females often have difficulties with training including timing, content and presentation of CME and other educational programs. Training programs need to be more responsive to the needs of female doctors with children in relocating to or requiring training in rural or remote areas.

Support and Stresses of Workplace

As females and males have different ways of dealing with stress, there needs to be gender specific support and mental health programs.

Leadership

The majority of decisions made on behalf of female rural GPs is done with an inherent gender imbalance. The decisions made can only hope to represent the opinions of the demographic of the people making the decisions. Females need appropriate representation in order for decisions to be relevant to their issues.

Information

Rural females are often less informed regarding extra assistance such as relocation and training assistance.

Remuneration

Due to the fact that females spend more time per appointment with their patients, females experience less remuneration per hour. In rural regions where bookings are full for periods in advance, there is less time for shorter appointments for acute problems.

AFMW hopes to increase the membership of regional, rural and remote female practitioners and at the same time address these issues facing our colleagues in the country. We aim to do this firstly by teleconferencing with the women at the coalface and find practical ways of supporting this valuable community resource. If you wish to be part of primary talks or wish to add comments please contact AFMW or your state medical women's organisation.