Physicians' views of medical practice in nonmetropolitan communities.
Physicians' views of medical practice in nonmetropolitan communities.
复制标题
医生对非大都市社区医疗实践的看法。
DOI：
10.2307/4593769
复制
发表时间：
1970
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
B. L. Bible
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. L. Bible
T HE DECREASE in the number of physicians and allied health professionals in the rural counties of the nation has become a matter of concern to physicians located in these counties as well as to the general public (1, 2). Trends in the United States toward urbanization as well as specialization in medical practice have resulted in a concentration of physicians in larger cities. The maldistribution of physicians in certain areas has deprived some rural communities of immediate access to medical care. The distribution and availability of health manpower for rural medical service areas is of continuing concern to the American Medical Association Council on Rural Health. With this problem in mind, the council surveyed a random sample of physicians practicing in nonmetropolitan areas of the nation during 1967 with a questionnaire entitled "Medical Practice in Small and Large Communities." The physician sample was selected in cooperation with the American Medical Association Department of Survey Research. Some background information on the physicians sampled as well as their perceptions of selected professional and social aspects of their practices are reported here. gested that a sample size of about 2,500 would be adequate for the study. With the use of the AMA's "master file" and a set of random numbers in the range of 1 to 50,000, a sample of 2,468 physicians was selected. Data were obtained by means of a questionnaire which called for completion of 71 multiple-choice items divided into three headings: (a) background information, (b) medical practice organization, and (c) factors associated with practice and community. Four mailings of the questionnaire were made during the summer and fall of 1967. By the termination date, December 1967, 1,975 questionnaires had been received, a response of 80 percent. Of those received, 122 were excluded because of incomplete or inconsistent answers or because the physician was not in active practice at the time. The remaining 1,853 questionnaires were analyzed in accordance with the objective of the survey. For purposes of analysis of the data, counties or communities were grouped according to relative population density. One classification of counties used was that developed by the Public Health Service which categorizes nonmetropol-
