What Makes Your Rural Community Distinctive?
Moving Beyond 'Hard-to-Staff' to Asset-Based Recruitment
Every rural health leader has heard it: "If you've seen one rural community, you've seen one rural community." Rural people fiercely celebrate what makes their place unique - yet our recruitment strategies rarely reflect this pride.
Instead, we default to deficit language: "hard-to-staff," "challenging caseloads," "isolated practice." We're essentially asking health professionals to come and solve our problems rather than contribute to our distinctive strengths.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: this narrative serves certain interests.
As one rural health leader recently observed: "Governments and metro-based health lobby groups have a vested interest in upholding the narrative that rural is a wicked problem that cannot be fixed."
When rural is framed as perpetually broken, it justifies:
Centralised solutions designed in urban centres
Continued resource flow toward metropolitan services
The assumption that rural providers should be grateful for whatever workforce they can get
The place-based recruitment revolution challenges this entire framework.
Instead of asking "How do we get people to go rural?" we ask "How do we work with existing local providers to determine what they actually need to function better?"
This shifts power from external problem-solvers to internal community builders.
This isn't just theory - it's proven practice.
Dr Cath Cosgrave's decade of rural health workforce research has demonstrated exactly this shift in action. Her Attract Connect Stay Framework moves beyond traditional recruitment to community-led, place-informed strategies that have transformed rural workforce outcomes across Australia. As Cath's research shows, when communities become co-recruiters rather than passive recipients of workforce solutions, the entire dynamic changes.
So what does this look like in practice?
Place-based recruitment for rural PHOs means designing attraction strategies that harness the unique strengths, relationships, and identity of specific rural communities. It's moving from magnetic pull (external incentives) to cultivating mauri - the inherent life force of a place that naturally attracts those who resonate with its values and purpose.
The Magnet vs Mauri Story
Imagine two PHOs, both struggling with GP recruitment:
The first practice operates like a magnet - trying to pull people toward their opportunity through external force. Their recruitment strategy? Increase the magnetic pull. Bigger rural allowances. More flexible hours. Better equipment. Stronger incentives.
The assumption: if we make the pull strong enough, we'll overcome the resistance.
But magnets have a problem. The moment you remove the external force, the attraction disappears. And you're constantly competing with other magnets offering stronger pull.
The second practice chose a different path - cultivating mauri.
Instead of asking "How do we pull harder?" they asked "What is the life force of our place that naturally draws people who resonate with our purpose?"
They stopped positioning themselves as a place that needed fixing and started showcasing themselves as a place with distinctive vitality:
The innovation emerging from their iwi partnerships - where social workers, occupational therapists, and nurses developed whānau-centred approaches
The telehealth solutions they'd pioneered that urban centres were now studying - where pharmacists provided medication reviews via video, and dietitians delivered nutrition education across three rural valleys
The community connections that meant clinical work was part of something larger - where occupational therapists helped design accessible community spaces, and speech-language therapists partnered with kōhanga reo
The professional growth opportunities for allied health professionals that simply couldn't exist in urban silos - where rural generalism meant psychologists, physiotherapists, and social workers developed expertise across the lifespan that their urban colleagues envied
The difference is profound.
The first practice attracted people motivated by external rewards - who often left when better incentives appeared elsewhere.
The second practice attracted people drawn to contribute to something meaningful - who stayed because they felt aligned with the place's inherent purpose and potential, whether they were GPs, practice nurses, or allied health professionals.
Mauri doesn't require constant maintenance like magnetic force does. When a place has strong mauri, people feel called to contribute to its flourishing rather than needing to be convinced to fill its gaps.
The question isn't "How do we make our magnet stronger?"
It's "How do we help people feel the mauri of what we're building here?"
Want to explore this further? Dr Cath Cosgrave's Attract Connect Stay programme provides the evidence base and practical tools for implementing place-based recruitment strategies that work.
Kia ora, ko Jane tēnei | I'm Jane 👋🏼
🧩 I help rural health system leaders build thoughtful and intentional recruitment and retention strategy
🧩 I talk about #ruralhealth #alliedhealth #equity #socialjustice
🧩 Want more like this but bite sized? Check out my LinkedIn content https://www.linkedin.com/in/janegeorgenz/