Most impor­tant work­ing conditions

Par­tic­i­pants were asked to iden­ti­fy their 5 most impor­tant work­ing con­di­tions. Safe­ty and secu­ri­ty was the most com­mon­ly iden­ti­fied con­di­tion (69.50%). Sup­port­ive man­age­ment (60.28%), pos­i­tive work­place rela­tion­ships (58.87%), fit for pur­pose work­place and accom­mo­da­tion (56.03%) and appro­pri­ate staffing and skill mix (56.03%) were the next most important.

Moti­va­tion to work remotely

Pro­fes­sion­al exten­sion and sat­is­fac­tion (68.97%) and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to com­mu­ni­ties (64.83%) remain the main moti­va­tions for work­ing in a rur­al and remote setting.

Oth­er sig­nif­i­cant moti­va­tions include per­son­al or lifestyle ben­e­fits (48.28%) and finan­cial ben­e­fits (35.86%).

Lev­el of remote experience

Sur­vey par­tic­i­pants with less expe­ri­ence work­ing in remote areas are more like­ly to work in an agency set­ting. 2 out of 3 par­tic­i­pants with less than 5 years’ expe­ri­ence are employed by an agency or by con­tract; where­as less than 1 in 3 with over 20+ years’ expe­ri­ence is employed via an agency/​contract. Those with 20+ years of expe­ri­ence are more than 3 times more like­ly to live and work in the same com­mu­ni­ty (35% ver­sus 11.63%).

Con­sid­er­ing leav­ing in next two years

28.5% of respon­dents are con­sid­er­ing leav­ing the remote set­ting in the next 2 years.

This is a reduc­tion from 2022, when 38% were con­sid­er­ing leav­ing. This could poten­tial­ly reflect that sta­bil­i­ty and nor­mal­i­ty are return­ing in some areas fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Com­mon rea­sons for con­sid­er­ing leav­ing includ­ed age, burnout, work­place relationship/​management issues, ten­sion between staff based on employ­ment pat­tern, staff short­ages, safe­ty and secu­ri­ty, and increased acu­ity of patients. Legal risk to pro­fes­sion­als, finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty, poor accom­mo­da­tion, and inabil­i­ty to access accom­mo­da­tion, or stay close with fam­i­ly were also mentioned.

Those who are con­sid­er­ing leav­ing are less like­ly to say they ​‘always feel safe at work’ com­pared to those who aren’t con­sid­er­ing leav­ing (9.68% ver­sus 28.24%).

They are also more like­ly to say they haven’t been able to voice their con­cerns (19.35% ver­sus 10.59%), and that they have expe­ri­enced a safe­ty and secu­ri­ty inci­dent while in their accom­mo­da­tion (22.58% ver­sus 8.24%) and had con­cerns for the secu­ri­ty of their per­son­al prop­er­ty (25.81% ver­sus 10.59%). This data direct­ly links safe­ty expe­ri­ences to retention.

Rea­sons for Membership

Most peo­ple decide to become and stay mem­bers to con­nect with the remote health com­mu­ni­ty (75.89%). Oth­er com­mon rea­sons include to sup­port CRANAplus (68.09%), access course dis­counts (56.74%), ear­ly course book­ings (53.90%) and receive the mag­a­zine (33.33%).