Our Vision
Our vision is to establish, promote, and develop a diverse global community of healthcare professionals working across the public, private, and third sectors, across a wide range of industries.
Our Mission
Setting standards, accrediting education, advancing research, and fostering collaboration.
Remote, rural and humanitarian healthcare is inherently interdisciplinary, combining clinical versatility with systemic innovation. Clinically, generalist healthcare providers must manage conditions ordinarily treated by urban specialists. At the systems level, models of care delivery in remote, rural and humanitarian contexts depend on approaches such as telemedicine, task-shifting, and resilient referral networks to overcome resource and workforce shortages. The Faculty’s mission is to strengthen these models to overcome these challenges, thereby reducing inequities and improving outcomes for dispersed and vulnerable populations.
As the professional home for Remote, Rural and Humanitarian Healthcare practitioners, the Faculty:
- Maintains a Capability Framework that defines, sets, and reviews clinical and professional standards;
- Provides and accredits education tailored to diverse contexts;
- Promotes research, quality improvement, and the responsible adoption of technology
- Fosters a global community of practice;
- Recognises and examines professional competence across the Remote, Rural and Humanitarian workforce.
What Is Remote, Rural and Humanitarian Healthcare?
At first glance the scope of remote, rural and humanitarian healthcare may appear impossibly broad and difficult to define. Despite this apparent challenge a clear definition is possible and was adopted by the Faculty of Remote, Rural and Humanitarian Healthcare. The remote, rural and humanitarian healthcare definition is as follows:
Healthcare delivered outside fully resourced health systems, where practitioners and teams must adapt to environmental, geographical, and systemic constraints, and account for diverse social, cultural, and developmental contexts.
Practice in this field is characterised by isolation – geographical, professional, and/or infrastructural – and shaped by limited resources, variable access to referral care, and often complex cultural or socio-economic contexts. Humanitarian healthcare further encompasses situations where health needs exceed the capacity of existing systems, requiring the mobilisation of additional health resources on short notice.
This definition affirms that while the principles of medical and professional best practice are universal, their implementation in remote, rural, and humanitarian contexts is influenced by environmental and systemic constraints. Practitioners working in these settings require specific capabilities to mitigate such constraints to maximise care quality and outcomes.
To address the need for development of this field the Faculty of Remote and Rural Healthcare (the Faculty) was formally launched in November 2018 by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In doing so, the College acknowledged the importance of this issue and the need for a professional home for practitioners. Subsequently the Faculty expanded in August 2020 to include humanitarian healthcare within its remit recognising the unique challenges and synergies in this field of practice.
Together, remote, rural, and humanitarian healthcare encompasses a unique field in which the interplay between context and constraints fundamentally shape health outcomes. It differs from urban healthcare delivery in both form and function, given its highly variable and often unpredictable models of care.
Context: People & Environment
Urban, rural, and remote healthcare should be understood as a continuum where the availability of healthcare decreases as distance from urban centres increases. Humanitarian crises can occur within any of these geographic or social contexts and turn even urban health systems into defacto remote and rural locations as constraints on healthcare delivery increase. Before describing these contexts in more detail it is important to recognize they differ not only in physical location but also in cultural norms, customs, stages of development, and levels of health literacy – all of which must be considered when designing and delivering care.
In most countries urban healthcare typically represents the highest standard of care available within a country, delivered through a combination of public and private hospitals, clinics, ambulance services, and allied health providers.
By contrast, rural healthcare is usually defined in terms of community population size, travel time, and/or distance from an urban centre. While collective or shared health services may still be feasible in these locations, rural facilities are often more limited in scope, capacity and staff and consequently often heavily dependent on government support.
Remote healthcare in turn is distinguished from rural care by further constraints: very small populations, longer distances, and extended travel times all complicate healthcare delivery and compromise outcomes. These areas often lack access even to rural clinics or hospitals. Remote contexts include most refugee camps, military operations, industrial sites (such as mines or offshore platforms), maritime environments (cargo vessels, cruise liners etc.), research stations (e.g. in Antarctica), and expeditions. In such settings, dedicated healthcare must typically be brought to the site, vessel, team or facility, as local infrastructure is absent.
Humanitarian contexts arise when populations lose access to their usual healthcare systems or when basic needs (such as food and water) are unmet. Alternatively, they may occur when displaced populations place unsustainable demand on fragile local healthcare systems.
Constraints in Remote, Rural and Humanitarian Healthcare Practice
Remote, Rural and Humanitarian Healthcare contexts are defined by inherent and mostly unchangeable population and geographic constraints – small populations, long distances, and limited travel options. These inherent constraints are further impacted by a broader set of six interacting and variable constraints on delivering care. These constraints may be grouped under three headings: care resources (the immediate availability of clinical inputs), care networks (the pathways to access support offsite) and care enablers (external or systemic factors that shape provision).
- Staff – Smaller populations mean fewer healthcare workers, who must adopt a broader scope of practice. This creates challenges for skills acquisition, retention, and maintenance.
- Supplies – Limited access to medicines, paraclinical tools, and essential equipment often restricts exploration of differential diagnoses and scope of management.
- Escalation Pathways – Referral to higher levels of care may improve outcomes but is frequently constrained by cost, distance, or transport capacity. (also see Faculty of Pre Hospital Care)
- Connectivity – Telehealth and remote consultation can enhance care, but depend on reliable communications infrastructure. Factors such as device ownership, data plans, and prepaid versus post-paid access affect equitable provision.
- Security and Safety – Armed conflict, criminal activity, or unsafe transport routes create physical barriers for both patient access and resource delivery.
- Legal and Regulatory Frameworks – Labour laws, import duties, cross-border health policies (telemedicine, medical data transfers), and privacy regulations can either facilitate or restrict the delivery of care.