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Health Planning Management - 2024 - Carson - Addressing the workforce crisis in rural social care A scoping review518.00 kB
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Addressing the workforce crisis in (rural) social care: A scoping review
International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Vol.39(3), pp.806-823
2024
PMID: 38297468
Abstract
Background
This scoping review identifies strategies potentially addressing the ‘workforce crisis’ in rural social care. The increasing global demand for social care has been coupled with widely recognised challenges in recruiting and retaining sufficient staff to provide this care. While the social care workforce crisis is a global phenomenon, it is particularly acute in rural areas.
Methods
The review identified 75 papers which (i) had been published since 2017, (ii) were peer reviewed, (iii) concerned social care, (iv) were relevant to rural settings, (v) referenced workforce shortages, and (vi) made recommendations for ways to address those shortages. Thematic synthesis was used to derive three analytical themes with a combined 17 sub-themes applying to recommended strategies and evidence supporting those strategies.
Results
The most common strategies for addressing social care workforce shortages were to improve recruitment and retention (‘recruit and retain’) processes without materially changing the workforce composition or service models. Further strategies involved ‘revitalising’ the social care workforce through redeploying existing staff or identifying new sources of labour. A small number of strategies involved ‘re-thinking’ social care service models more fundamentally. Very few papers specifically considered how these strategies might apply to rural contexts, and evidence for the effectiveness of strategies was sparse.
Conclusion
The review identifies a significant gap in the literature in relation to workforce innovation and placed-based studies in rural social care systems. It is unlikely that the social care workforce crisis can be addressed through continuing attempts to recruit and retain workers within existing service models.
Details
- Title
- Addressing the workforce crisis in (rural) social care: A scoping review
- Authors
- Dean B. Carson (Corresponding Author) - Umeå UniversityAlbert Brunet Johansson (Author) - Umeå UniversityMia Schaumberg (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - BiomedicineAnna‐Karin Hurtig (Author) - Umeå University
- Publication details
- International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Vol.39(3), pp.806-823
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.1002/hpm.3774
- ISSN
- 1099-1751; 0749-6753
- PMID
- 38297468
- Copyright note
- © 2024 The Authors. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- The data that support the findings of this study are available in and were sourced from the online databases Academic Search Premier (EbscoHost), Cinahl, and Medline.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Biomedicine; Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; Cancer Research Cluster
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991002598102621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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