Editorial: Rural recruitment and training promotes rural practice by GPs, but is it enough to retain them?

The findings reported by McGrail and colleagues in this issue of the MJA support the effectiveness of Australian government incentives for recruiting and training general practitioners in rural areas as a strategy for reducing rural medical workforce shortages. The study found that rural origin of trainees and rural vocational training of GPs were each strongly associated with their practising in rural areas in the early years after completing vocational training. However, their findings also suggest that these effects had started to diminish by 4 years post-training. This finding is consistent with another recent Australian study, which found that the effects of rural recruiting and training diminished over time.