Rural Health and Access to Care

How Living in Rural Locations can Affect Access to Care

with

Dr. Christy Simpson

Ethics Collaboration Coordinator, Dept of Bioethics, Dalhousie University

Discussion questions:

1. What are our obligations as a society to ensure access to care for people living in rural communities who take on higher-risk occupations that are necessary to sustain our communities?
2. In your opinion, what is a reasonable expectation about how far you might need to travel to access some forms of care?
3. What do you think of the idea of having a specialist or a team of specialists travelling to rural communities instead of having patients travelling to them?
   • What benefits do you foresee with such a strategy?
   • What might be the downsides?

Resources: Rethinking Rural Health Ethics – C Simpson and F McDonald (Springer 2017) http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319608099