Rural medicine as a sub-speciality

Let me begin by differentiating rural health from rural medicine. If rural health is the big picture, including all the team players and stakeholders concerned with health in rural areas, then rural medicine is the medical slice of that action. It is the medical input to the rural health team. So, depending on the size and the capacity of the rural health team, there are various medical roles that need to be fulfilled, in the community, in primary care and in hospital care. The smaller the team, the smaller the capacity, the more multi-skilled the practitioners need to be.